Posts By Mike Gray
A sort of American Andrei Tarkovsky, Gus Van Sant’s films are characterized by long tracking shots, stretches of unbroken silence, and drifting dream-like cinematography that makes seemingly everyday events something unique and special. Often depicting characters that live on the edge of society–either due to their sexual orientation, purposeful defiance of norms, or from being misunderstood–Van Sant has enjoyed success… Read more »
Listen: everyone likes a good movie. When a film stirs your emotions and makes you think, it’s a great experience. But nobody likes a bad movie–one that moves like molasses, features terrible dialogue and loathsome characters, and is filmed like the cinematographer went blind before every scene. But then there are movies that are considered so bad, they’re good: The… Read more »
For those that remember, the 2000s were a relatively dark and difficult decade: with terrorism on the rise, large wars on multiple fronts occurring across the globe, and a financial crisis that crippled economies across the globe, things were looking grim. And appropriately enough, in this environment this decade produced a number of pretty great dark comedies. It seemed that… Read more »
Spike Lee not only encapsulates the Black American experience but uses the medium of film to call out the hypocrisies within United States society and the racial, political, and sexual tensions just simmering beneath the surface. He’s fierce, unapologetic, and touches raw nerves in his work about the problematic social arrangement between the races and classes in America through the… Read more »
The 1990s ushered in a darker, edgier tone in films. With the newfound popularity of indie filmmaking, which operated outside the traditional Hollywood system, filmmakers found a new freedom in the types of films–and the sort of subject matter–that could be produced. In this atmosphere, dark comedy thrived, particularly edgy satires of social and political mores. And comedy can often… Read more »
Making a film is expensive: between union labor costs, the exorbitant salaries the on-screen talent draw, and the cost of special effects, on average a Hollywood film costs around $65 million. But this doesn’t include promotional and marketing costs, which can run nearly half the original budget alone, bringing the average movie’s overall budget to $100 million. Since theaters take… Read more »
What it is about a delightfully dark comedy that we enjoy? While comedy comes in many forms–romantic, slapstick, buddy, slobs vs. snobs, surreal–only dark comedy seems to cut to the core of what makes something funny–which is that comedy is ultimately a response against the darker, sadder, and ultimately mortal elements of our existence. So it’s far better to watch… Read more »
Since the beginning of their renaissance over the past decade, superhero movies have quickly become some of the most profitable and popular films that are looked forward to by audiences every year. It seems each year sees one or two big blockbuster superhero films that break box office records and receive rave reviews from critics. We are a little over… Read more »
Horror films are often resistant to criticism, either because the genre as a whole isn’t particularly highly regarded by “serious” critics or because many horror films are low-budget, poorly produced shock films that look to deliver on their implicit promise of graphic violence rather than creating a quality movie. And 2017 has been no different in this regard than most:… Read more »
We live in interesting times: the second decade of the new millennium has been an unpredictable one, with a number of completely unexpected cultural events happening (the successful revival of nearly every popular franchise from 30 years ago, and some of the most popular shows on television being graphic TV-MA shows among them, and of course Trump’s election). Perhaps as… Read more »
So many terrible movies, so little time. The film industry is large and mostly profitable; even ostensible garbage turns a profit on a long enough timeline. Due to this, there aren’t many notable “box office bombs” anymore–and anyway, that’s not a reliable measure of a film’s worth in general. As you’ll see on this list of the worst films (so… Read more »
So many movies, so little time–or access. While many films enjoy wide releases during their time in the theaters, a number of them–independent features or else those that have been judged to have a “limited appeal” (whatever that means) are released to a smaller number of theaters or else never make it out of the major markets, often centered in… Read more »
Every year is an exciting one for the film fan since it brings the promise of a slate of new movies to enjoy, hate, critique and analyze. And while ripping apart a film is often good sport, the joy of watching a new film that surpasses expectations is really what keeps bringing the cinephile back to the theater. Although we’re… Read more »
Weird films have a magic to them of sorts: it takes a wholly unique vision–and a steadfast confidence in that vision–to bring it to life. Often not commercially promising, the stranger films that are produced are also the ones that have something to say, and whether important, comical, or just disturbing, due to the uncompromising nature of these visions they… Read more »
The New Tens continue the trend of experimentation, genre mixing, and innovations that the film world began to heavily produce in the 2000s, and with the new and unseen quickly becoming de rigeur for emerging filmmakers to test their mettle and stand out among the increasingly crowded field of indie filmmakers, this decade has been an exciting one for cinephiles… Read more »
Who doesn’t enjoy a good weird movie every now and then? When properly done, a strange film can excite the viewer who has grown accustomed to the standard mainstream fare to re-engage their passion for the medium or else encourage neophytes into delving deeper down the rabbit hole of more bizarre fare. The 90s was a boom time for film,… Read more »
