Considering Gone Girl was just released it’s an apt time to review director David Fincher’s filmography. There’s surely a lot of other good video essays out there, but this recent analysis by Every Frame a Painting is excellent. It’s devoted to a technical breakdown of Fincher’s preferred shot composition, supported by many examples from his entire filmography (with Gone Girl of course, exempted.)
GoodBadFlicks reviews the evolution of the PG-13 rating since it’s introduction in 1984. Most of the focus is on recent years where many otherwise R rated films trim content to ensure a PG-13. Remember, with a PG-13 the desirable teen demographic can watch unrestricted. But in the process, it’s watering down a lot of otherwise great content. To quote the narration:
PG-13 is supposed to be pushing the envelope of PG, not pulling R backwards.
Such an amazing debut from director Kenneth Lonergan. It’s one of my favorite movies from the early 2000s, highlighted by impeccable acting by Mark Ruffalo (who broke through to a wider audience after being noticed here) and Laura Linney.
Wonderful brief look back over at The A.V. Club at Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express, still one of my favorite movies of all time. Whimsical, gorgeously shoot, this is essential 90s cinema that many overlooked in favor of Kar-Wai’s later In the Mood for Love. In the Mood is still wonderful, but it never quite connected with me tonally like Chungking Express did.
The Dissolve’s Scott Tobias:
French-Tunisian director Mabrouk El Mechri, working from a script he wrote with Frédéric Benudis and Christophe Turpin, pours these biographical details into a scenario that’s half hostage thriller, half Irma Vep-style meta-movie. And though the latter part is more compelling than the former, JCVD never forgets that Van Damme’s image is the focal point. El Mechri opens with the best shot of Van Damme’s career (and really, a legitimate candidate for any list of all-time great opening shots), a single take of the 47-year-old kicking, punching, shooting, and stabbing his way through a gauntlet of attackers, who come after him with guns, knives, grenades, even a flamethrower. The shot is ruined when the cheap set collapses at the end, but the young Chinese director has no sympathy for his exhausted middle-aged star: “Just because he brought John Woo to Hollywood doesn’t mean he can rub my dick with sandpaper.”
The movie has its weak points, but overall JCVD is very compelling (especially for someone like me who grew up loving Van Damme’s earlier work like Kickboxer and Bloodsport), both for that aforementioned opening fight scene and a legitimately moving six minute monologue Van Damme delivers partway through the film. There’s something about his presence that makes me root for a comeback out of direct to VOD purgatory.
One of my favorite films of the year gets the film study treatment in this informative video.
Look over De Niro’s best work in that 70s to 80s period; staggering output. But my how the mighty have fallen in recent years.
Sam Adams, writing for Indiewire:
In [Verge writer] Pierce’s rationale — or, more to the point, rationalization — downloading the movie in advance is like peeking at a band’s setlist before the concert…”The Expendables 3,” you see, “is meant not to be watched but to be experienced. As art becomes commoditized experience becomes the only thing worth paying for, and there’s evidence everywhere that we’ll pay for it when it’s worth it. We don’t want to pay for access, but we’ll gladly pay for experience.”
Of course, commodities are things you pay for. What Pierce really means by “commoditized” is “devalued,” and what he means by that is that since ‘The Expendables 3’ isn’t worth anything in the first place, there’s nothing wrong with taking a copy for yourself.
Working as a web developer/designer myself, I tend to support policies that push technology forward. But there’s no justification behind David Pierce flat out stealing a movie with the justification that it’s “access” over “experience”. Technology has limits; it’s worrisome to see Pierce, a senior writer at what’s normally a pretty solid tech news site, adopt this sort of blind “techno libertarianism” bent.
An informative video by Tony Zhou that outlines the techniques director Michael Bay resorts to again and again throughout his filmography. As Zhou illustrates, it’s distinctive, at times visually impressive, but overblown and overused to the point of exhaustion for the audience.
Grantland’s Wesley Morris on the 1994 summer movie season:
A couple of weeks after the release of Gump, James Cameron would deliver a more alarming battery of effects with True Lies, as well as a woman who’s treated almost as badly as Jenny. But Zemeckis’s movie was speaking to a generation of people out of both sides of its mouth. Baby Boomers needed their history and nostalgia served to them like baby food. Gump’s centrism could please everybody.