Reaction Shots

There are times when I just have to put my critical analysis on pause and give myself over to a film that I just like. Ryan Reynolds pursued his Deadpool project with ardor for eleven years before it made it to screen. After two movies for Fox, and the subsequent purchase of the studio by Disney, the question had to be asked; just where or how or if the Merc with a Mouth was going to fit into the MCU. Turns out, pretty easily, I 'd say. Of course, post- Endgame MCU offerings have been spotty, though even the worst are not without their pleasures, but let's face it; the lightning that Feige's bottle caught may have seeped out more than Marvel or Disney might like.  I found the first Deadpool entry in the MCU to be fleeter than I thought and I've never been so happy to hear the title character ramble on so much to help drown out the nagging awareness of the movie being two disparate narratives that don't quite harmonize or mesh. There are distinct tonal shifts betwee...

Let's be clear: Ti West's X and Pearl are masterpieces of new horror cinema. The latter remains one of the very few prequel-sequels that renders its predecessor more meaningful, more nuanced and like X , arguably pushed the genre forward in equally unexpected ways. I better pause here to give a HUGE SPOILER WARNING for, at least, the first two films, and possibly the third.  Watching MaXXXine , I was struck by several general responses. One, West, his art directing team of Jason Zev Cohen and Jason Baldwin Stewart, production designer Jason Kisvarday and his set decorator wife Kelsi Ephraim, costume designer Mari-On Ceo,  and cinematographer Eliot Rockett evoke a period specific milieu (1985) equal to that of the previous films. The only constants here are West himself and Rockett. i mention the rest of the team because you feel the grit and seediness of mid-80s Los Angeles as its own character.  I would also add that MaXXXine may be the most fun of the three films; it...

Osgood Perkins' Longlegs is a near masterpiece. Yes, in summary it sounds like a Silence of the Lambs riff/homage/rip-off, but it's far different. If anything, it's very much more of what Demme's film would be if David Lynch directed instead. That might feel reductive and unfair to Perkins who is proving himself to be a singular voice in the psychological or just plain horror genre, but it's really not. Lynch's influence has pervaded a couple of generations of filmmakers by now and while it's fun to play "spot the Lynch", it's more useful to see how that influence is repurposed and reinvented. Here, Perkins pulls away from the mostly visual impact of Lynch's work and opts for working with sound design to set the tone the movie overall.  I don't see anything in sound desinger Eugenio Battaglia's filmography that points to much that could be shared with Lynchian sonics, so I'm assuming that Perkins had very specific ideas about ...