Sometimes you just want fluff. And honestly, who doesn’t like the idea of a secret history shrouded in clues and mysteries all around in the everyday, and the history of a country? Like an inoffensive version of The Da Vinci Code, the first National Treasure is a solid popcorn film, meant to entertain and not…
Tag: production design
Moon (2009) – Duncan Jones
It’s been a while since I last watched Moon. In fact, I may not have watched it since it first came out. I remember delighting in it, and simply loving Sam Rockwell’s performance. So I was quite happy to settle in for it again, this time knowing how everything would play out, and pick up…
Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975) – Ishiro Honda
Director Ishiro Honda returns for the last Godzilla film of the Showa era, and while it still features space aliens intent on taking over the planet, this one feels a little deeper than some of the previous entries, by introducing some interesting characters who seem to really struggle with their natures. I’m talking, specifically about…
The Prisoner (1967) – Arrival, and The Chimes of Big Ben
The Prisoner is a series I had long heard about, but, for some reason known only to some deep, dark corner of my psyche, I had never watched. Everything I heard about it suggested I would enjoy it, that it would be right up my alley. But I never dug in and screened it… ……
Highlander II: The Quickening Director’s Cut (1991) – Russell Mulcahy
No matter which version of Highlander II you choose to watch (and why would you choose either?) the film is a mess. It screws the previous film either way you look at it, either by making the immortals a race of alien exiles, or just an ancient forgotten, technically advanced race in the prehistory of…
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011) – David Yates
This is it. It all led to this film, after seven films, the Harry Potter franchise comes to its close with this, the second part of the adaptation of the seventh and final novel. Picking up where the first film left off with Voldemort’s (Ralph Fiennes) claiming the Elder Wand, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma…
TIFF 2021: Dune dir. Denis Villeneuve
Magnificent. Triumphant. THIS is the movie I saw in my mind’s eye when I first read Dune in 1984 when I was anticipating the Lynch film (which I love for its own reasons). The visual aesthetic, the sound and production design, the score (I swear Hans Zimmer isn’t the only one throwing a few nods…
Outland (1981) – Peter Hyams
Peter Hyams writes and directs this galactic update of the classic western, High Noon, that sees Sean Connery stepping into the Gary Cooper role of a lone marshall awaiting the arrival of men who are coming to kill him. With a visual look that seems to marry it with the universe of Alien (aided by…
Predestination (2014) – Michael & Peter Spierig
Somehow this little sci-fi, time travel, paradox embracing film never hit my radar when it first came out. It would occasionally pop up in my recommended lists, and I would think yeah, I should check that out, and then promptly forget about it. But the wait was worth it, because when I finally did settle…
Saturn 3 (1980) – Stanley Donen, and John Barry
Gorgeous set and production design can’t save a film with a number of top drawer stars (Kirk Douglas, Farrah Fawcett, and Harvey Keitel) thanks to a heavily edited final cut, and flawed story. Not to mention some miniature and model work that may have worked in the 50s but looks incredibly bad in the 80s,…
The Mind Reels 