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10 of the Best Movie Attack Scenes of All Time

If you’ve seen a film montage in the last 10 years, then you’ve been witness to at least one of the scenes mentioned on this list: the vibrating water glass from Jurassic Park signaling the T-Rex prowling nearby. It’s the perfect type of image to tell the audience: something is coming. These flashes of exhilaration …

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10 Best Movie Battle Combat Scenes of All Time

Whether storming a beach or a besieging castle, marching on foot or charging on horseback, in a historical epic or a fantasy extravaganza, battles scenes are some of the most complex and intricately choreographed of all action scenes. Capable of zooming in to a one-on-one fight between two foes or zooming out to show a …

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‘Gravity’ a visual stunner that lacks character complexity

By now, Alfonso Cuarón has pretty much earned the crown of being one of the best, if not the best, technicians in modern cinema. His last three films—Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Children of Men, and now Gravity—all demonstrate a playful and intelligent command of space, his camera always roving in, around, and out of locations whenever possible. Gravity raises the bar for technical prowess in mainstream filmmaking, and Cuarón doesn’t shy away from the challenge of a film set entirely in space. This is nothing short of a flawless technical exercise, a frequently intense and relentless theme-park ride of a movie. The real downside is that Cuarón could’ve made more than just a ride.

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Shot Block: Alfonso Cuaron’s ‘Gravity’

Now that Alfonso Cuaron’s long-in-the-making sci-fi spectacle Gravity has smashed its way through Venice and TIFF (it’s astounding), its detractors have raised two major objections: first, that its spectacle comes at the expense of its emotional content; second, that its lengthy, whirling camera movements are self-conscious and barely motivated, summarized by Nick McCarthy for Slant …

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Good Guy Playing Bad: Peter Mullan in the Spotlight

The Talking City and Wolf’s Clothing A little over two years ago, I was fortunate enough to attend a convention in Glasgow entitled Scottish Students on Screen, an event based around giving young film scholars a better familiarity with the workings of the British Film Industry and general movie making as well as a presentation …

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Harry Potter as Cinema: ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’

In case you didn’t know, the last Harry Potter film is coming out on July 15th.  In  countdown to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, I will be doing a bi-weekly series called “Harry Potter as Cinema”, starting with the first film in the series and working my way up to the final …

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The 100 Best Films of the Decade: 2000 – 2009 (Part 8)

39- The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) Directed by Wes Anderson Genre: Dark Comedy, Family Drama Wes Anderson’s fairy tale of a New York dysfunctional family is a wonderful, quirky, offbeat comedy-drama with the right mix of humor and poignancy. Never sentimental or predictable The Royal Tenenbaums proves that Wes Anderson remains one of the truly original …

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