What makes a brilliant script? Is it quotable lines? Is it nuanced dialogue? Or is it just the ability to move the story along and not get in the way? When looking back through the history of screenwriting, there are plenty of iconic films based on previous work; the Writer’s Guild of America voted Casablanca …
Easy Rider is not just a significant American movie. It is also an exceptional example of independent filmmaking, one where, with the unwavering ambition of youth and a desire for something different, a film rises above and beyond the studio-beholden establishment to achieve a triumph all its own.
#10. Chinatown (1974) Lost to: The Godfather Part II Well, no one will argue that it should have won, but still. Roman Polanski’s film made a true leading man out of Jack Nicholson. It grabbed eleven nominations, only taking home one. That being said, that one was for Original Screenplay, written by Robert Towne, which may …
This is a somber, sorrowful, generally faithful, and visually satisfying version of one of Shakespeare’s most cinematic works
The imagery of “Tess” is what strikes first and leaves the greatest impression, and it was undoubtedly with this in mind that Criterion pulled out all the stops with this release.
While Grimm is rooted in fairy tales, this week’s episode is the first to seemingly take direct inspiration from a modern classic, The Little Mermaid. Usually the show takes a particular myth or folk tale as a jumping off point before going in a new direction, but “One Night Stand” is a break from this, providing direct parallels to several of the beloved film’s key elements. Elly, our main Nyad protagonist, loves Jake from afar and saves him from drowning, pulling him onto the land and resuscitating him. She stares lovingly at him as he blearily opens his eyes, not sure what he’s seeing, and then jumps back into the water once he’s awake. Jake then spends much of the episode trying to understand what happened to him and find this woman who, being deaf, cannot speak to him. The antagonists as well as many of the specifics may differ, but there are too many similarities for this to be intended as anything other than Grimm does The Little Mermaid, a format Once Upon a Time has built much of its show around.
Film noir comes full circle in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974). Thirty years before its release, crime dramas saw the birth of a fundamental character – the noir hero. From Dashiell Hammett to Raymond Chandler, The Maltese Falcon (1941) to The Big Sleep (1946), the noir hero inhabits a world of hopelessness and dark tragedy. The Maltese Falcon saw Humphrey Bogart’s inaugural portrayal of this amoral anti-hero and began film noir as we know it.
The Sixth Sense has come and gone as has its (alleged) twist ending. It’s hard to categorize The Sixth Sense but like The Shining or Inception I shall dub it as part of the puzzle picture genre that keeps appearing then disappearing only to come back. At first sight, the very existence of puzzle pictures …
At a time of the year that’s all about picking the best of the best among movies, it seems singularly appropriate to talk to someone whose year-round profession is assaying the good and the bad up on the big screen. “I’m one of the few people on the paper who’s never had a journalism class, …
“The producer is like the conductor of an orchestra. Maybe he can’t play every instrument, but he knows what every instrument should sound like.” Zanuck The producer can be an enigmatic presence in the film making process. It is a role that is hard to define and thus, rarely recognised with the same reverence as …