Knife in the Water Directed by Roman Polanski Poland, 1962 Certainly a stretch to categorize as horror, Roman Polanski’s debut feature anticipates the creeping dread and tense blocking that will characterize his later, truer films of the genre. Husband and wife Andrzej (Leon Niemczyk) and Krystyna (Jolanta Umecka) pick up a young hitchhiker (Zygmunt Malanowicz) …
Anybody who has ever been to a high school reunion (and I’ve been to my share) will tell you that the calendar and the clock can be incredibly cruel (particularly when combined with the long-term effects of gravity, but let’s not go there). Time punishes creative works as well. Some work grows dated, stale, stiff. …
Whether you measure your movies by box office, reviews, or popular appeal, Sony’s $125 million remake of the 1990 Ah-nuld Schwarzenegger interplanetary action fest Total Recall looks like a strike-out. The movie opened with a lethal softness; a $25.7 million first weekend meaning Recall won’t even come close to making back its budget during its …
Remakes, “re-adaptations”, and “re-imaginings” have been a frequent occurrence in cinema throughout much of its history, alongside the franchise “reboot” concept that has become particularly commonplace in the last decade. 2011, however, saw a rather curious trend of remakes of films and TV shows, either formerly original concepts or previous adaptations themselves, where the original’s …
As our last thrilling episode ended in June, we had left poor, helpless, hapless Hollywood tied to railroad tracks with the July/August Express out of Union Station barreling down, dastardly Audience Disinterest at the throttle, henchman Audience Apathy throwing on more coal. But wait! Are those cavalry bugles heard from just over the hill? …
Heaven and earth are ruthless And treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs; The sage is ruthless And treats the people as straw dogs The Cahiers du Cinema called it “the furious springtime of world cinema,” and nowhere was it more furious than in the United States. From the 1960s through the 1970s, a confluence …
Summer blockbuster season is a perfect time for the movie fans to show their true colors. For some, the appeal strikes with a comic book inspired action movie, as in Iron Man 2. For others, it might be a laugh-out-loud high concept comedy, as in Get Him to the Greek. But for cult geeks like …