My Thumped review of Insidious: Chapter 3
It looks the part, but it's definitely the weakest of a series I'm quite fond of. #link
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Date: June 2015
It looks the part, but it's definitely the weakest of a series I'm quite fond of. #link
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These oral histories the AV Club's been doing have been great stuff so far. #link
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The French do crime, American style in this domestic take on the French Connection. #link
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This has been amazingly helpful to me as of late. #link
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Max Landis (yes, he's son of you-know-who) directs a defence of his wrestling fandom with this adaptation of the story of Triple H. It's pretty amazing, and even makes me curious to give Chronicle a shot. [c/o MetaFilter] #link
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Before Fury Road, I revisited the original Mad Max, and came away impressed:
Mad Max is a spoof, right? It’s only in this rewatch, many years after first seeing it, that I’ve realised what a send-up of ’70s exploitation action thrillers it is. But it’s an affectionate one, betraying George Miller’s genuine admiration for such films, and so well done it’s little wonder it came to be regarded as one of the key examples of a genre it’s mildly ribbing, if you look close enough.
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Everyone else might be shitting on it but I enjoyed the hell out of The Rock's latest blockbuster. #link
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"While it started off soundly, the PG-13 rating now represents the insidious idea that filmmakers working above a certain budget level can no longer decide who their films are for." As an aside, it was always insane to me, growing up in a climate with legally enforced ratings in specific categories (G, PG, 12, 15 and 18 when Batman came out, for reference), that kids in America could see movies wildly inappropriate for them as long as they were accompanied by an adult. Like, who the fuck would take their kids to see Aliens? But then I remember the US cinema industry is lorded over by a voluntary body of little Napoleons who've expressed unabashed sexism and homophobia in their rating 'recommendations'. The MPAA needs to die the way of the Comics Code, for all of our sakes. #link
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I'd never considered it before, but it makes perfect sense. And there's enough evidence here to indeed characterise it as pre-Nazi propaganda; it's too easy to fall on the notion of 'they were different times, people didn't know any better': there were plenty who did know, and those people were in positions of power and influence. So it was then as it is now. [c/o LinkMachineGo] #link
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I was born in 1980 so I was just that bit too young to get Max Headroom beyond being aware of it, and thinking it was cool as fuck. #link
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"Atlas Shrugged for kids" was my summation. That nobody's talking about this movie barely a fortnight after its release is also telling. #link
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Reblogged from my Letterboxd list:
Does somebody have something scandalous on Nicholas Cage? Because that’s the only explanation I can fathom for his appearance, and in a starring role no less, in this godawful Christian fundamentalist dreck. And I’m not even talking about its plain-as-day racism and anti-everything-not-fundie ethos. If the Evangelical Christian right wants to be taken seriously in the mainstream, surely they can do a lot better than this depressingly inept sub-TV-movie garbage, an exercise in awfulness that takes formula filmmaking and screenwriting to its lowest nadir. That it’s the work of a second-unit director on a number of top-tier action flicks simply beggars belief. On the plus side, it’s ripe for an MST3K-style laugh-along commentary. Get the beers in or hit the hard stuff, ’cause you’ll need it.
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