Sunday 13 May 2018

Films

Jigsaw (2017)
[#104 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]

Terminator 2: Judgement Day 3D (1991)
[#103 in 100 Films in a Year 2018]
I've seen the 16-minutes-longer Special Edition of T2 several times before (three, according to my guesstimated records), but I'm pretty sure I've never seen the original theatrical cut, and I've definitely never seen it in 3D, so it gets a new number.

Fiction

Trigger Mortis by Anthony Horowitz
Chapters 6-10

this week on 100 Films

5 brand-new reviews were published to 100 Films in a Year this week, and they were...


Anon (2018)
Many a lazy review has described Anon as “like a Black Mirror episode”, which is not wholly inaccurate but is getting to be a stale descriptor — Charlie Brooker didn’t invent high-concept dystopian sci-fi about the dangers of future technology, so why wheel out the comparison every time anyone else dares venture into the same ballpark nowadays? Nonetheless, that is the ballpark Anon is playing in, but mixing speculative sci-fi with an equal dose of hardboiled noir to keep things spicy.
Read more here.


The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
The poster child for German Expressionist cinema, as well as featuring “cinema’s first true mad doctor” and “cinema’s first unreliable narrator” (at least according to David Cairns on the Masters of Cinema Blu-ray — I haven’t verified those statements for myself), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari certainly has a lot to unpack for a film that’s barely an hour-and-a-quarter long. Or does it? Because one has to wonder if there’s an element of style over substance here.
Read more here.


Drew: The Man Behind the Poster (2013)
If you don’t know the name Drew Struzan, there’s a fair chance you know his work: he’s the poster artist behind the likes of the Back to the Future trilogy, almost everything Indiana Jones related, many iconic Star Wars posters (including the primary art for the prequel trilogy), and so many more. Even when not painted by Drew himself, his style has been a major influence on blockbuster posters across the board, even in today’s era of Photoshopped collages. Nonetheless, you may wonder if the topic can really support a feature-length documentary. How much is there to say? Turns out, plenty.
Read more here.


The Hangover Parts II & III
The Hangover was a surprisingly big hit back in 2009 (was it really so long ago?), so naturally it spawned a sequel. That went down less well, mired in criticisms of just being a rehash of the original. I don’t know what people expected, really — The Hangover was sold on its high-concept setup, so naturally they repeat that for the sequel.
[...]
Clearly the people in charge of the Hangover series took on board criticism that Part II just rehashed Part I’s plot, because Part III takes the same characters and spins them off onto a wholly different narrative. There isn’t even a hangover involved. Unfortunately, that didn’t work either: based on ratings found across the web, it’s the least popular of the trilogy.
Read more here.


More next Sunday.