8 years ago
All posts by Andy Crump
Remake My Day: Michael Mann
Stoic loners, secret lifestyles, blurred moral lines, and slick action; these are the things that Michael Mann films are made of. Mann’s recurring proclivities as director have allowed him to endure and flourish in his storied career, measured in decades and p...
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“Medeas”
Arthouse fare nestled within the American heartland is, and probably always shall be, considered Terrence Malick's territory. Hence early analogies drawn between Andrea Pallaoro’s excellent debut, Medeas, and the American maestro's works, currently enjoying a ...
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“Dark Summer”
A film that uses DJ Caruso’s career as a reference point is a film that starts out in dire straits indeed. Hence Paul Solet’s Dark Summer, a horror riff on Disturbia, which is itself a riff on Rear Window. Like Caruso, Solet is using Hitchcock’s work as his bl...
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“The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies”
Do you remember that pulse of excitement you felt when New Line and Warner Bros. first announced that they’d be adapting The Hobbit into a movie, a la The Lord of the Rings? Do you recall your anticipation as the project went, year by year, from being an idea ...
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“Rosewater”
Rosewater is at once everything and nothing like what we expect from The Daily Show host Jon Stewart. The title feels like a political watchword, and the film itself is a furious indictment of governmental oppression and human ignorance. It’s also blisteringly...
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“The Tower”
Boy, has The Tower been put through the wringer in the last 6 years. It began its life as a novel in 2008; was translated into a two-part television event in 2012; and now has had both of those halves stitched together into a theatrical release for American th...
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“The Great Invisible”
"We were in the dark. It was quiet. Nothing. I only had enough time to tell my guys that we're in trouble. 'Something's wrong, guys, and we're in trouble.' And then the first explosion hit us. It picked me up and flung me, it flipped me through the air like a ...
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“Nightcrawler”
Meet Lou Bloom. He’s a young, ambitious go-getter, a diehard professional always on the lookout for good career opportunities that offer plenty of upward mobility. He’s also a charming psychopath, which is a nice way of saying that he’s a snake wrapped up in J...
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“Default”
Action cinema tends to elect its bogeymen based on current world events. In True Lies, America fought against Palestinian terrorists. In 2008, John Rambo brought down a brutal Burmese military regime almost singlehandedly. Most recently, The November Man and J...
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“Diplomacy”
World War II spanned six continents, lasted as many years, and involved roughly 100 million participants. Pardon the quick and dirty history lesson, but an appreciation of scale is needed to understand why people continue to write books and make movies about T...
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