Night at the Cinema

  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...

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...

Foxcatcher  Directed by Bennett Miller Written by E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman The first thing that struck me when viewing Foxcatcher was the quality of the acting on display. I've liked Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo in films before like The Hateful Eight and Zodiac respectively, but Steve Carell really surprised me. I respect Carell as an actor but none of his work is anything I would say I especially enjoyed. He kills it here as real-life millionaire and certified weirdo John DuPont. As a whole I would say these performances are all worthy of at least an award nod, it's just a shame that such great acting is failed by a flawed and often dry script. The story follows Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum), a real life gold medal Olympic wrestler, who lives in the shadow. of his brother Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo), another gold medal Olympic wrestler. He is living his day-to-day life training for the next wrestling event hoping for a chance to win mor...

The Place Beyond the Pines Directed by Derek Cianfrance Written by Derek Cianfrance, Ben Coccio, Darius Marder "Keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.” -Exodus 34:7 I feel like this quote from the Bible is perhaps the most apt I could find for this film. I was surprised by The Place Beyond the Pines. On Netflix, the description for this film reads: "An ambitious cop and a desperate criminal clash. The impact is much larger than either could imagine." This is technically correct but it made me expect a different kind of movie than I got. If you're looking for a crime drama with two A-list actors going head to head for two hours, this isn't your movie. This is a personal drama focusing on three different characters that doe...