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| BITCHSLAP STATS |
| Movies Listed: |
14330 |
| Total Ratings: |
225546 |
| Total Reviews: |
28706 |
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| FRENCH DISPATCH, THE |
"It’s An Institution"
Peter Sobczynski says... "Remember that scene in “Being John Malkovich” where the actual Malkovich takes the trip inside of his own head and finds himself in an existence that is literally all Malkovich all the time? (If you haven’t seen the film, I promise you that the previous sentence will actually make sense once you do.) I couldn’t help but think of that moment while watching “The French Dispatch,” the latest vehicle for the always-idiosyncratic Wes Anderson to indulge in his personal cinematic whims and obsessions on ever-increasing canvases. Normally I do not like to use the phrase “self-indulgent” when discussing any artistic endeavor—after all, almost all art is an exercise in self-indulgence to some extent—but I cannot readily think of a better way to describe this effort. Mind you, this is not to suggest that it is a bad film—it is practically bursting with delights in every scene and I enjoyed it pretty much from the first frame to the last. Then again, I have pretty much been on the Anderson bandwagon ever since coming out of a screening of his debut, “Bottle Rocket,” and realizing that I had seen the work of a true original, a notion that was confirmed with his very next film, the coming-of-age masterpiece “Rushmore,” so I am clearly down for what has become his increasingly insular cinematic approach. That said, I must admit that those who are not already avowed fans of his work may well find it to be either baffling beyond belief, annoying beyond measure or some combination of both." (more)
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| HALLOWEEN KILLS |
"A swing and a miss."
Rob Gonsalves says... "It’s difficult to judge 'Halloween Kills,' since it’s the middle film in what’s going to be a trilogy (the capper, 'Halloween Ends,' starts filming in January for release next October). What’s more, this trilogy, under the stewardship of director David Gordon Green and his writing-producing partner Danny McBride, looks as if it’s going to be all about fear and its destructive or self-destructive variations." (more)
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| DUNE (2021) |
"Saint Muad'Dib"
Peter Sobczynski says... "Before getting into any discussion of “Dune,” the long-awaited new screen adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic sci-fi novel that has been tantalizing readers and frustrating potential adaptors ever since it was first published in 1965, I suppose I should first offer up my own prior interactions with it over the years. Although science-fiction is a literary genre that I have never really gone for in a big way, I have made it a point to read at least some of the key works and therefore sat down and plowed my way through it when I was about 12 or so. Truth be told, I wasn’t especially overwhelmed by it. While Herbert certainly knew how to conjure up fascinating new worlds and creatures, he didn’t seem to have much of an idea of how to populate them or tell a story that didn’t bog down into pseudo-mystical gobbledygook at least once every couple of pages—Harlan Ellison once described it as being nothing more than “King of Kings” with giant worms and that pretty much sums it up perfectly in my book. The other reason I read the book then was because, after a number of false starts, it was coming to the big screen in a hugely expensive and highly anticipated screen adaptation from David Lynch, then hot off his Oscar-nominated hit “The Elephant Man,” that magazines like “Starlog” and “Twilight Zone” assured me would result in an epic cinematic event whose size and scope would make even the “Star Wars” films look puny by comparison." (more)
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| HALLOWEEN KILLS |
"Boo Too"
Peter Sobczynski says... "Like so many other film fans, I consider John Carpenter’s 1978 breakthrough hit “Halloween” to be one of the greatest horror movies ever made—a decidedly grim fairy tale about a group of teenagers being stalked by the boogeyman told with such skill, precision and expert manipulation on Carpenter’s part that it still holds the ability to send chills down the spine of viewers, no matter how many times they’ve seen it, more than 40 years after it first appeared. Since that original release, the film has gone on to inspire a cottage industry of sequels and remakes but with the single exception of “Halloween III: Season of the Witch,” the delightfully deranged red-headed stepchild of the franchise that had no real connection with any of the other films and which has gone on to become a cult favorite after angering fans during its initial 1982 release, they have all been pretty awful. Okay, maybe a couple of them—say “Halloween II” (1981) and “Halloween H20” (1998)—have been marginally better than the likes of “Halloween Resurrection” (2002) or the garbage Rob Zombie remakes “Halloween” (2007) and “Halloween II” (2009) but they have all been pretty bad to some degree. In fact, with the possible exception of the “Jaws” films, I cannot readily think of another film franchise—at least one that has remained a viable theatrical prospect over the years—where there has been such a gap in quality between the original film and the various continuations. (Yes, the various “Friday the 13th” sequels have all been pretty shitty but since the original wasn’t a good film by even the loosest definition of the word, the drop in quality wasn’t particularly noticeable.)" (more)
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| LAST DUEL, THE |
"The Outrage"
Peter Sobczynski says... "If I had to make a list of the most accomplished filmmakers of the last half-century or so, Ridley Scott’s name would definitely hold a place of prominence. A director who generally favors bold and ambitious works and who has generally strived to avoid repeating himself, even when doing sequels to his own films, he has amassed a list of credits that is practically bursting with the kind of critical and commercial successes that most of his peers rarely attain even once in their careers—“Alien,” “Blade Runner,” “Legend,” “Thelma & Louise,” “Black Hawk Down,” “Hannibal,” the full-length version of “Kingdom of Heaven,” “American Gangster,” the “Alien” sequels “Prometheus” and “Alien: Covenant” and “All the Money in the World” immediately leap to mind. At the same time, he has also shown himself over the years to be more than capable of turning out subpar junk as well when working with material that is either subpar or that he just does not seem to connect with on some fundamental level. When he does one of these lesser items—“A Good Year,” “Robin Hood,” “Exodus,” to name a few, the results feel as if they hurt a little more than the usual run-of-the-mill stinker because we know that Scott is capable of so much more. Unfortunately, his latest effort, “The Last Duel,” is not one that is going to go down as one of his great works. A handsomely mounted but dramatically inert work, it offers up a story from the pages of history that is nevertheless meant to resonate with those paying attention to current events but fails to do anything especially interesting with it over the course of its two-and-a-half-hour running time." (more)
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| VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE |
"Lightning seldom strikes twice (if you can call the first Venom lightning)"
Jay Seaver says... "The first "Venom" movie was not, I suspect, what anybody involved wanted it to be; I'd love to know who thought they were making a sort of sci-fi horror movie, who was making a comedy, who wanted straight-ahead superhero action, and who saw a weird queer-ish romance underneath it all and decided to play that up. Somehow, don't ask me how, the movie worked better than it had any right to, even if it was not what one would call above-average. The sequel is clearly the result of Sony trying to reverse-engineer what happened and do it again, and deliberately replicating chaos doesn't come easy." (more)
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| WIFE OF A SPY |
"Keeps the viewer guessing through (and past) the end."
Jay Seaver says... "Almost all Japanese films are co-produced by television networks these days, and even if one doesn't recognize the logos before the film, "Wife of a Spy" has the look of a TV-movie or miniseries, specifically the sort of period mystery or World War II homefront drama imported from Great Britain that filled PBS or A&E schedules a few years back. It's both what it is and good camouflage for what director Kiyoshi Kurosawa and his collaborators are really up to, a sneakily clever little thriller that keeps the audience guessing but never in a way that undercuts what is being put front and center." (more)
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| BLUE BAYOU |
"Trapped in between."
Jay Seaver says... "As a fan of Justin Chon's previous two films as a writer/director, I find myself a little disappointed by the slightly bigger, more ambitious Blue Bayou, even though he seems to be following the same path: Create a character and setting of the sort that he would like to play as an actor even if he doesn't often get the opportunity, hang just enough of a story on it for the movie to have a starting and ending point, and let his cast do their work. "Blue Bayou" can get by with that for decent stretches, but sometimes it needs a little more." (more)
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A LOOK BACK AT TIFF21
by Peter Sobczynski |
| "Here is an overview of a number of the films that I saw that were presented at this year's hybrid edition of the Toronto International Film Festival" (more) |
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'DID YOU PUT THAT TOGETHER YOURSELF, EINSTEIN, OR YOU GOT A TEAM OF MONKEYS WORKING AROUND THE CLOCK ON THIS?'
- Hockney, Usual Suspects
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