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Kill Bill

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Kill Bill Written by Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman (Character: The Bride) Directed by Quentin Tarantino Quentin Tarantino has always been a bit of a phenomenon for me. I've heard many complain about how stale and boring a lot of modern films are, a sentiment to I only partially agree. I recently watched the film Elysium, starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, and while I did like it I felt that it lacked something more compelling. The protagonist was, while well acted, boring, the cinematography and soundtrack felt very bland and uninspired, and the ideas the film presented weren't really explored in a way that films like Blade Runner 2049 and shows like Altered Carbon explore their subject matter. Enter Tarantino who is famous, and in some circles infamous, for his indulgence. Inglorious Basterds was a blood soaked romp through occupied France filled to the brim with long scenes of small talk that stretch on for upwards of ten minutes or more, wan...
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Altered Carbon

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Altered Carbon Created by Richard K. Morgan If you like Blade Runner, you will like Altered Carbon. This is the thought that dominated my time with Altered Carbon, the latest Netflix Original Series. But now that I think about it, I don't think this show appeals to just fans of Blade Runner. To correct my previous statement; if you like Blade Runner, Total Recall, Deus Ex, Cyberpunk in general, film noir, Firefly, or just creative and interesting ideas and worldbuilding, then you will like this. This show is a combination of things that I like but didn't know how much I would like when put together. It's a cynical view of humanity in the far future, it's a cyberpunk dystopia, it asks deep and philosophical questions, it's very violent, and there's a lot of nudity. What's not to like? The show opens with Takeshi Kovacs, a terrorist and criminal, who is tracked down by a squad of Protectorate soldiers and killed. He wak...
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Hostiles

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Hostiles Written by Donald E. Stewart and Scott Cooper Directed by Scott Cooper "The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer" -D.H. Lawrence Those words from the famous English novelist begin the film as the camera opens to a quiet, remote, almost idyllic farm somewhere in the American West in the late nineteenth-century. A man is hard at work tending to the farm while his wife is teaching her two daughters and caring for her baby. We see several Comanche raiders on horseback, their faces covered in war paint, descend upon the farm. The father rushes inside, instructs his family to run, and grabs a rifle to try and hold off the war party. In a hail of gunfire and war cries he is gunned down and scalped before the mother and her children become targets. To spare the gory details, she narrowly escapes the war party as the sole survivor. Cut to our reveal of Christian Bale, a Union officer who sits on his horse watching as a...
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Lethal Weapon

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Lethal Weapon Written by Shane Black Directed by Richard Donner I have a long history with 80's action movies. In my opinion, the action movies made from the late 1970's the roughly the mid 90's represent the golden age of action cinema. During this time we saw countless universally praised flicks like the Dirty Harry series (The Dead Pool not withstanding), some of Sylvester Stallone's movies (a personal favorite is the ultra-cheesy and ultra over-the-top Cobra), absolutely anything starring Arnold Schwarzenegger (some standouts are Predator, Commando, Kindergarten Cop and Total Recall), the Die Hard Series, and even Steven Segall's earlier movies. Perhaps one of the best movies of this golden age is the fantastic Lethal Weapon. Lethal Weapon has a lot of star power behind it. Most visible are the two leads, Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. But the director, Richard Donner, has a long history in film and television and has directed several cl...
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IT Chapter One

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  IT Directed by Andy Muschietti Written by Stephen King (Novel), Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga, Gary Dauberman I have a checkered history with Stephen King's famous story about a killer clown in Derry, Maine. I caught the first five minutes of the 1990 miniseries with Tim Curry as the clown and from that I developed a fear of clowns that has lasted probably fourteen years, the residue of which I'm still dealing with today. Some years ago I went back to watch the miniseries all the way through; after passing the five minutes that gave me such vivid nightmares as a child I found the miniseries was just laughable, it isn't really scary in the slightest despite all of it's attempts. When the new film was announced I thought "oh, it's just another remake of a classic and it isn't going to be any good." My mother is a huge Stephen King fan and really wanted to see it so I bit the bullet and saw it with her, all of the positive reviews of th...
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Rebecca

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Rebecca Directed by Alfred Hitchcock Written by Daphne De Maurier (Novel), Robert E. Sherwood, Joan Harrison, Philip MacDonald, and Michael Hogan To date I've only seen two of Alfred Hitchcock's films, Vertigo and Rebecca (no, I haven't seen Psycho. Yes, I am ashamed). I found with Vertigo that Hitchcock has a very slow, deliberate style that takes a certain amount of patience to really appreciate. Don't get me wrong, Vertigo is a fantastic film that explores themes like obsession and trauma with a great cast of actors led by the classic movie star James Stewart. For Rebecca, his first Hollywood film, he has the acting legend Laurence Olivier as the headlining talent and leads the cast in a psychological thriller that is a exceptionally acted, flawlessly atmospheric and sometimes a bit too slow for it's own good. Rebecca follows a young woman (Joan Fontaine) who meets a wealthy widower named Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) in M...
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