Star Wars’ artistic and technical innovations made a profound impact on Hollywood. After its release audiences moved away from gritty, violent thrillers like French Connection and The Godfather and moved towards fun summer blockbusters like Superman and Ghostbusters. Yet, despite breaking box office records, its artistic achievements are repeatedly scoffed at. The New Yorker’s film critic, Pauline Kael, famously criticised… Read more »
Film critics, film writers and ardent fans are bound to disagree as to what films should be classified as being part of a particular genre. Arguments over what films should be called horror films or suspense thrillers are commonplace as are disputes over what films should fall into the category of film noir. Naturally these disputes extend to films in the… Read more »
There are so many film lists that chastise documentaries that distort the so called “truth”and dismiss certain journalistic etiquettes. From “Top 10 documentaries that lied to you”, to “6 Famous Documentaries That Were Shockingly Full of Crap”; documentary filmmakers can expect a cinematic vasectomy if they even remotely alter a ‘real event’. German filmmaker Werner Herzog famously presented his ‘ecstatic… Read more »
Considered by many as one of the greatest directors to ever live, to ever hold a camera or to ever peer inside the human soul. Ingmar Bergman dubbed as the Swedish miserablist for his dark and foreboding works most often chronicling the human condition in all sorts of maligned forms. From doomed love affairs to internal demons tormenting the exterior… Read more »
Clint Eastwood and Dirty Harry. Sylvester Stallone and Rocky. Harrison Ford and Indiana Jones. These actors and the roles they’ve played have become synonymous. One cannot think of the fictional character without conjuring up the image of the actor. That is the power of brilliant casting. But, of course, that doesn’t always happen. Studios and producers in a mad dash… Read more »
All movies are exploitation movies, if you really think about it. Each one seeks to elicit interest from viewers, attempts to exploit something in them that will cause them to take time out of their busy schedules and consume whatever visual story has been conceived by the filmmakers. However, generally when people call something an “exploitation movie”, the implication is… Read more »
This list simply offers a wide selection of films which unfold almost entirely (or entirely) at night time; whether it be action, comedy, horror, a classic, a modern feature, a classic film, a blockbuster or a low-key indie feature – they all take place when the sun has set. Sometimes, the night is so much a part of these films… Read more »
Everyone likes good surprises in life, sometimes movies can provide that, especially those thriller/suspense films. Most movies put the big twist in the end, these movies on the list put it in the middle. Watching this kind of movies is just like riding a roller-coaster, you slowly climb to the top, then it’s a sudden shift of direction all the… Read more »
If you are serious about your love for cinema, you have got to know your essentials so it would be nice to compile a list of ten undisputed masterpieces from ten different nations. If you are a real cinema aficionado, you might have already seen all of these but maybe there are few that are still on your list of… Read more »
Style in cinema can be the ultimate creative expression. Every great film has a distinct style, and many times the most memorable movies are those that give the viewer an experience that let them see and feel things they couldn’t normally do. Whether it be an action scene that simultaneously breaks the laws of physics and inspires a true “wow”… Read more »
Every story has an opposing force that the protagonist has to face in order to triumph. Some face nature, some face themselves, but most do face the ever famous antagonist. Not all villains are all that evil, just misunderstood; the people on this list are just plain easy to hate. They have no redeeming qualities and relating to them just… Read more »
Gangster movie, or mob movie, has history. Its first golden period is the 1930s, the time Warner Brothers gangster films became some of the biggest hits in the box office, the time film stars like James Cagney, Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson made their name well known. In the early 1970s, an Italian-American made a gangster movie that became… Read more »
Australian Cinema has never been content to tell a normal story. It finds the weird, the beatific, and the controversial in all it looks at. What was Peter Weir’s mind frame when in 1971, he shot a film in his own house on a remote island near Sydney where several visitors arrive at the expensive guest house and are forced… Read more »
‘Body-Horror’ is a sub-genre which primarily focuses on the destruction, deformation or infiltration of the human body in various forms. Whether it be by spreading diseases, scientific or medical experimentations, technological impulses or anything else the imagination of the filmmakers can muster – the various methods of decay of the human body can serve as an abundance of metaphors given… Read more »
The recent downfall of the video store and the rise of Netflix and online streaming have left a crucial element to the browsing experience in the dust. No longer can you talk to the knowledgeable and somewhat film nerdy guy behind the counter about what’s good or what’s not. The “five star” Netflix rating system gives a decent overview but… Read more »
San Francisco’s rolling hills, fog and bridges have called out to Hollywood filmmakers for years, and many of them have ventured north the three hundred miles or so to shoot their films in ‘Baghdad by the Bay’. Here is a list of the 20 most memorable films with settings in San Francisco. I tried to favor films that were set… Read more »
More commonly today seen as a cheap ploy in horror movies, the hand held camera technique can be an effective cinematography style. Before the days of “Cloverfield” and “The Blair Witch Project” the “shaky camera” motif used by directors was innovative and ground breaking. Difficult to master yet chronically abused, this style is exemplified in films from documentaries to Avant-Garde… Read more »
The music can sometimes MAKE the movie. Think about a film like Jaws, or for that matter any film scored by John Williams. Think about horror movies. Would anyone consider Psycho a classic if not for the music during the infamous shower scene? Imagine Halloween without John Carpenter’s creepy tune. We leave the theatres humming the tunes and they stay… Read more »
Both horror and comedy are some of film’s oldest and well-loved genres. It comes as no surprise then that the two merged really early on, just as they had done previously in literature. Examples of the horror-comedy hybrid genre in film can be found as far back as the early nineteen hundreds. It wasn’t until in the thirties that horror-comedies… Read more »
