Getting my Letterboxd reviews caught up here, starting with this Kickstarted documentary on the ’90s Superman movie that never was:
You may have heard the story before – Kevin Smith’s infamous anecdote about Jon Peters and the spider – so much of this fairly amateurish documentary might feel like repetition, as it’s basically an extended riff on the same ‘so crazy it has to be true’ Hollywood tale. But where it lacks in professionalism, it makes up for it in its enthusiasm for the subject, and its inclusion of some revelatory behind-the-scenes footage that show the real promise of what might have been had Nic Cage indeed got to wear the Big S on the silver screen.
If you’re into making-of talking head docs, and I know I am, you’ll get a lot out of Crystal Lake Memories:
From the people who brought us the Elm Street doc Never Sleep Again comes this exhaustive oral history of the Friday the 13th franchise. Best digested chapter by chapter, because at nearly seven hours in total, it’s a long ride.
I didn’t particularly enjoy Kick-Ass 2, which kinda defeats the purpose of an action film, no?:
Hints at something deeper below the surface – at the damage to the psyche by traumatic events, even those comparatively mundane by movie standards, that might drive one to vigilantism – are completely drowned out by bog-standard gory action and unabated ‘ironic’ sexism in this unnecessary sequel. Riding to death the one thing that made its predecessor a flavour of the month, it’s not nearly half as funny or clever as it thinks it is.
From that dud to an Oscar-winner, ’70s classic Network is a depressing watch in 2015:
Watching this sharp-for-its-day satire some four decades after the fact is a difficult job in a time where Glenn Beck has been a thing for many years.