Let Us Do Our Duty As Americans: The Purge (2013)
Let Us Do Our Duty As Americans: The Purge (2013) First off, purge your minds of all the negativity that the nay-sayers are throwing out there: The Purge is an effective little horror-thriller that is more than worth a look. And I’m not being condescending with the ‘little’ tag: coming in at just under an hour-and-a-half it’s not going to outstay its welcome. Nor, to be honest, is it going to stretch the old thinking...
Want to Play ‘Hide and Clap’? The Conjuring (2013)
Want to Play ‘Hide and Clap’? The Conjuring (2013) The scariest thing about James Wan’s surprising hit ghost story The Conjuring surely must be what it tells us about the power of advertising. Indeed, given the success of this film it must be no less than terrifyingly demonic. Yet that can’t possibly be the whole story, because word of mouth has been just extraordinary. In fact I was looking forward to it with enormous...
Mob Mentality and Innocence: The Hunt (2012)
Mob Mentality and Innocence: The Hunt (2012) Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen) is a guy that has had his fair share of lousy luck. He’s in the middle of a bad break-up with his wife and struggling to see his son more often. He’s also recently lost his job as a school teacher due to the usual problems in the economy. Still, as we join him in Thomas Vinterberg’s film The Hunt, things seem to be on the turn upwards for him. His estranged...
Feeling Nothing At All: The Iceman (2012)
Feeling Nothing At All: The Iceman (2012) The first thing that has to be said about the three main principle actors in Ariel Vromen’s The Iceman is that they are all excellent. The next thing to say is that they are all playing roles that they could do in their sleep. Without having read the script. I mean, come on. Ray Liotta playing a ruthless gangland boss? Not much of a stretch there, would you say? Winona Ryder,...
“Hell of a thing: A Boat in a Tree…” Mud (2013)
“Hell of a thing: A Boat in a Tree…” Mud (2013) I’ve often mentioned on this blog and elsewhere my admiration for the great American writer Mark Twain in general and for his Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn tales in particular. So it soon became evident to me that I was going to be crazy about Mud, a contemporary yarn about life on the Mississippi River. It was made all the more enjoyable by the fact that sitting down to it...
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