6 years ago
All posts by Christopher Runyon
Beyond the Hills: Something Wicked This Way Comes
A
There's a moment in the final act of Romanian director Cristian Mungiu's monastery-set drama Beyond the Hills that, under the hands of any other director, could've been played up as something from a conventional, generic psychological horror film. But thi...
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The ABCs of Death: A Diary of Frustration
Words can not describe the experience I had watching The ABCs of Death, a series of 26 shorts named after each one of the letters of the alphabet and the many ways we could all die. I came into it expecting just a lot of typical 5-9 minute horror shorts and ca...
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The Last Exorcism: Part II: The Fun of a Straight-To-DVD Sequel in Your Multiplex
D-
In the spectrum of laziness, The Last Exorcism: Part II is somewhere at or near the nadir. It's dispassionately directed, thinly scripted, and just plain unscary. Not one element works in it. Not one scare is executed properly. Not a single aspect of thi...
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Dark Skies Is Better Than You Thought It Would Be
B
Dark Skies has everything going against it. It's directed by Scott Stewart--who's responsible for the awful duds Legion and Priest--, it's another creepy-house horror movie in an era that's littered with Paranormal Activitys and Sinisters, the trailer was...
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A Lake: Rolling Bank of Fog Can’t Hide Transparent Flaws
D
There's a pull quote on one of the advertisements for A Lake comparing the film's director Philippe Grandrieux to the likes of Bela Tarr. In a way, this comparison makes sense. While not without some notable differences, Grandrieux's A Lake is relentlessl...
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The Darren Aronofsky Retrospective: Black Swan
The Movie Mezzanine Filmmaker Retrospective series takes on an entire body of work–be it director’s, screenwriter’s, or otherwise–and analyzes each portion of the filmography. By the final post of a retrospective, there will be a better understanding of the fi...
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Lore: A Nation Divided; A Woman Torn
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World War II has been depicted so much in films that it's practically a genre. And like all genres, we've come to expect all that we could from any WWII movie. Also like all genres: After a while, there's bound to be someone willing to bring an original ...
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Runyon’s 20 Most Anticipated Films of Sundance 2013
Like the majority of movie-buffs, I wasn't able to go to Sundance. One of these days, perhaps my dream will become a reality, but this year it was not meant to be.
In the meantime, all I could do was fawn over my Twitter feed to see what movies were getting...
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The Darren Aronofsky Retrospective: ‘The Wrestler’
The Movie Mezzanine Filmmaker Retrospective series takes on an entire body of work–be it director’s, screenwriter’s, or otherwise–and analyzes each portion of the filmography. By the final post of a retrospective, there will be a better understanding of the fi...
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The Darren Aronofsky Retrospective: ‘The Fountain’
The Movie Mezzanine Filmmaker Retrospective series takes on an entire body of work--be it director's, screenwriter's, or otherwise--and analyzes each portion of the filmography. By the final post of a retrospective, there will be a better understanding of the ...
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