The Master Movie Review

I’ll say this much for Paul Thomas Anderson: he’s one of the few filmmakers working within the Hollywood system who can consistently make gutsy and challenging films. He doesn’t pander to any audience; his endings don’t come wrapped in tight packages; there is no paint-by-numbers to tell you exactly how to feel and when. He creates emotionally and spiritually complex works that often leave us scratching our heads and that maybe, just maybe, leave us a little better off as human beings than when we walked into his world.

With that said, I’m becoming increasingly frustrated by his films. I don’t object to their complexity or challenges, but I have misgivings about the general lack of joy to be found at any moments in The Master. Boogie Nights and Magnolia are films I can watch over and over, finding joy amid the tremendous sorrow every time. There was real vibrancy and panache in Anderson’s directing style. He combined the dexterity of Altman maintaining multiple characters and threads with the energy of Scorsese. Then he started to go quiet.

Seven Movie Review

Although I saw this when I was already 17, it scared the shit out of me. When I saw it for the first time in the cinema I literally fell out of my chair at the moment when the 'sloth' victim turns out not to be dead. This was one of the most terrifying cinematic experiences I've ever had.

Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.

Seven is the one film as I reached toward adulthood that really got under my skin in a way that terrified me. This police procedural thriller about a sadistic serial killer was created through the use of set design and cinematography that are just unnerving. I can’t recall another film of its kind that left me so shaken. It’s unrelenting not only in its sick and ghastly murders, of which we only ever see the aftermath, but also in its dark and depressing tone, designed specifically to destroy the audience’s will to go on, the way the rain continually pours down on the movie’s unnamed city and casts a gloom outside every window. Even the ending, which ties everything together and offers some explanation for the apparent irrationality of the killer, is almost entirely without hope or a denouement.

25 Years Ago This Month: October 1987

David Mamet's first film as director was House of Games, one of the great films about confidence men.

Before Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman to the Oscar for Best Director, she once directed a cult vampire film called Near Dark starring Bill Paxton.

The late 80s saw a string of films similar to Like Father, Like Son, in which two people change bodies for a while. In this one medical doctor Dudley Moore and his son, a high school track runner played by Kirk Cameron, accidentally exchange minds after ingesting an Indian potion of some sort.

Movie List: Top Ten Friday the 13th Deaths

So now that I've posted reviews of all the Friday the 13th films along with lists and ratings of all the deaths in those films, I've compiled my Top Ten of all those deaths. For this list I have not considered deaths of Jason or accidental deaths or deaths at the hands of anyone else. Only those perpetrated by Mrs. Voorhees (Friday the 13th); Roy (Friday the 13th: A New Beginning); and Jason (Part II; Part III; Part IV; Part VI; Part VII; Part VIII; Jason Goes to Hell; Jason X; Freddy vs. Jason) have been considered.

In retrospect, my individual ratings were sometimes a little skewed. I have included the rating I applied when I reviewed the film, but in some cases I have chosen a "7" over and "8" because my reaction now is stronger.

Honorable mentions:
- In Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning Junior's head is chopped off while riding his motorcycle in circles whining to his mother about getting his ass kicked earlier (6).
- In Friday the 13th Part 3 Vera has a harpoon fired directly into her eye from long distance (7).
- In Friday the 13th Part 3 Andy gets cut in half as he walks on his hands (6).
- In Freddy vs. Jason Freeburg is sliced completely in half by a machete (7).

10. In Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI Sissy is pulled through an open window, her head is twisted around and removed (8).

Modern Classic Movie Review: The Silence of the Lambs

I probably saw this movie sometime when I was in high school. I was fairly familiar with it and I found it pretty damn frightening. It's not quite a horror movie in the same vein as a slasher film, but I thought it worth including because it's a variation on horror and it was part of my childhood and youth.

Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.

The killer's gaze is turned back on the audience, turning the power structure of the horror film around.

The Silence of the Lambs turns the serial killer and slasher film genre on its head by crafting the most compelling character not as the killer whom the FBI is hunting, but as the already convicted Hannibal Lecter, who sits in a basement cell and may have crucial information to help them catch their man. More remarkable than that is that everyone remembers Lecter as this imposing and frightening villain, a role that helped Anthony Hopkins win the Best Actor Oscar, but he is on screen for all of 16 minutes. That speaks to the power of seduction that he possesses.

Modern Classic Horror Review: Scream

This is the natural closing to my personal journey because it was released during winter break of my first year in college. So I was at the beginning stages of becoming a full-fledged adult and being finished with things like getting scared by horror movies. That said, this was a cinematic experience that genuinely frightened me. This was a slasher film to put a cap on a generation's worth of slasher films that relied heavily on certain conventions. I still think it's a fantastic horror movie, but its effect has certainly worn off and been done to death in the intervening years.

Click here for a list of other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.

By the end of 1996 it had been so long since a genuinely scary horror movie had been in wide release that it seemed like the genre might be dead forever. Our old friends Freddy, Jason, and Michael had been flogged into oblivion and people were well attuned to the genre conventions resulting in audiences that were a lot smarter than those going to see slasher films 15 and 20 years earlier. These conventions included things like the couple that has sex getting killed; the drug users getting killed; dumb female characters always making the wrong decisions and getting dead as a result; idiot police officers; revenge motives rooted in a complicated back story; obvious suspects as red herrings; and on and on. Kevin Williamson was an aspiring screenwriter when he wrote Scream and eventually sold it, after which legendary horror director Wes Craven was hired to direct.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers Movie Review

Because this was released when I was already nearing the end of high school it wasn't really a part of my horror culture when I was a kid. I watched it once when I rented it with a friend, but honestly that was probably when we were in college, past my cutoff year of 1996 for this October series.

Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.

As incredible as it was that Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers improved upon the quality, or lack therof, of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, that’s nothing compared to Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, the series’ sixth film. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to criticize here, but taken as a whole experience it’s more fun, better written and acted, and scarier than most other horror sequels.