Tag: Action
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The blue-collar swagger of Bruce Willis
When at his peak, Bruce Willis was the guy we all knew from somewhere busting people’s heads, sarcastically shrugging his shoulders and smoking a billion cigarettes with that trademark grin of his, the one that suggested his characters were mostly losers with a good heart, losers who, if given the chance, would take one last…
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Dirty Harry: The Doomed Protagonist
In 1971 a young Clint Eastwood and veteran director Don Siegel collaborated on three occasions, including Play Misty for Me – Eastwood’s directorial debut (featuring a brief and rare acting cameo by Siegel) – The Beguiled – a Southern gothic thriller set in the American Civil War – and Dirty Harry – the story of…
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Casino Royale: Reinventing a Franchise
Hollywood loves a good franchise, but for the most part the chances of a franchise being consistently good are very slim. The Bond franchise is a prime example of this. From its humble beginnings in the 1960s, a period that saw a Scotsman in Sean Connery rise in the ranks and become one of the…
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Bond Flop
There is something that I cannot stop thinking about and that is: WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH SPECTRE? The anticipation for this one was huge. At first, it was announced as the last Bond film of the epic saga that started all the way back in the 60s with Sean Connery. After having revolutionized…
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God is Gonna Cut You Down
Remember that post I wrote a while back about Sam Peckinpah’s revolutionary Western that goes by the title The Wild Bunch? In that post right there, I talked about how Peckinpah wanted to express his anger and frustration with the world he found himself living in (late 60s, Vietnam War casualties and the whole country going…
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No Heroes
Today’s topic: the end of an era in The Wild Bunch (1969). A lot of people consider the Western genre to be boring nowadays. My own generation, the youngsters, seem to be repulsed by the boring scenery, outdated dialogue and predictable action. Sure, Westerns are predictable; the good guy wins, the bad guy dies. The special effects…
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Hunter’s Maze
Today’s topic: sizzling energy and on-screen entertainment. When you think of entertaining, fun movies to watch, what comes to your head? Star Wars, because of the galaxy battles? Die Hard, because of the flying bullets? Something along the lines of Hellboy or even Rocky? Entertainment is the reason why so many people watch movies nowadays. In fact, the “blockbusters”, the…
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Land of Wolves
Today’s topic: the darkness of Sicario. What an experience, sitting in an empty theater, gazing at the pulse pounding images of the recent arrival, Denis Villeneuve’s new thriller – Sicario. Villeneuve is by definition a master of depicting ominous, claustrophobic atmospheres with acclaimed previous efforts like Incendies, Enemy and the 2013 hit, Prisoners. To say that Sicario is the best movie of the…
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Pulp It
Today’s topic: violence. Yeah, sure we can say a lot about violence. In a certain sense if violence didn’t exist cinema would be running short of movies. But by violence I don’t mean Lethal Weapon, Beverly Hills Cop or Rush Hour 2 type of violence. Why not? Well, violence has its own, specific voice and one…
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Wide Eyes, Wild Places
Today’s topic: Nature. Nope, it’s not a biology lesson, I’m well aware of it. What I mean by the word ‘nature’ is the key role that nature, in this case the tall Elephant grass and the impenetrable jungle, play in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line. A lot of you, when you hear the words…
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