David Vining's Blog, page 163

Freaky

There’s appeal to the genre mashup. Two genres that rarely go together meshing together for perhaps the first time provides a sense of originality that’s missing from many movies, especially when it comes to the genres at hand. Max Landis has made a screenwriting career out of this where Chronicle was the found footage movie and a superhero movie, American Ultra was a spy movie and a stoner comedy, and Bright was a fantasy movie and a cop movie. The director of Freaky, Christopher Landon, ha...

Gangs of New York

This is Martin Scorsese’s biggest and messiest movie. This is a massive and dense history lesson of a largely forgotten moment and series of cultures in America’s largest city. Amidst all the gangs, politicians, historical conflicts, and recreations is the story of a young man’s search for vengeance. The movie’s spilling over the sides, and I imagine that Scorsese’s original four hour cut of the film might have worked better, especially on the back end, but this wealth of riches is so thorou...

The Terminator Franchise: The Definitive Ranking

Ah, another franchise reviewed. Also ranked. May the Listicle gods grant me bounty for this list.

This is a case study in a studio led franchise that’s designed to simply earn money. From a surprise beginning with a tiny-budget of a first film through giant behemoths of productions, the different production companies (that almost all went bankrupt shortly afterwards for some reason) were pursuing box office numbers. They got lucky with the first couple of sequels, driven by James Cameron’...

Terminator Dark Fate

Bare competence. That’s pretty much all we get from Tim Miller’s entry in the Terminator franchise produced by James Cameron, basic competence. Aside from a couple of large decisions, this is almost a complete remake of the first film for a new era. It’s far from perfect, and I wouldn’t even go so far as to call it good, but it sort of works as a whole. Except that it’s got two competing storylines that they never really merge into one.

This franchise is a mess. It was relatively cohesive...

Bringing Out the Dead

There’s such a natural set of connections between Scorsese’s late-90s Bringing Out the Dead, set in the early 90s, and Taxi Driver that it feels like a spiritual sequel. Written by Paul Schrader, set in New York City at night with a main character who drives people around in a dirty, run down environment, Bringing Out the Dead is ultimately the more hopeful variation on the story that made Schrader and Scorsese famous in the 70s.

Nicholas Cage already had a well-worn reputation as an acto...

Terminator Genisys

This movie is crazy, but not the kind of crazy from a talented artist doing the unexpected. No, it’s the kind of crazy of the untalented having no idea what to do with a property that’s not their own, has a well-established formula that they can’t escape, and is trying desperately to make up for someone else’s failure in the previous entry. I kind of feel bad for Alan Taylor, the director. He was a well-established television director who decided to try and make it in the movies, so he ended...

Kundun

I’ve now seen this movie three times, and after the first two viewings I was never able to develop any real thoughts on the experience. The first time was about fifteen years ago the first time I went through Scorsese’s filmography. The second time was a few months ago when I bought the Kino Lorber Blu-ray (which looks really good, by the way). I had intended to review it at the time, but I could not bring myself to come up with a strain of thought on the film during or afterwards. So, this ...

Terminator Salvation

This movie is a mess. Reading a bit about the background, this movie was written and re-written endlessly, even on the set, all the way through production and even into post-production when they reshot the ending. There seems to be no guiding hand other than McG, the director, and he doesn’t seem to understand that in between the action scenes you need a story that’s interesting. He’s a set piece director who wants to put together awesome sequences in an order. That kind of director can make...

Casino

This feels like Martin Scorsese on autopilot. Half history lesson and half drama, Casino feels like a film built from way too much material to pare down in the time Scorsese and Pileggi had to write the script. Recalling a lot from Goodfellas in terms of actors, characters, and overall structure of a story in the world of the mob, Casino is Scorsese using all of his tricks on familiar ground which feels like it should be fodder for me. I do find the movie an entertaining three hours, but the...

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

Unpopular movie opinion: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is the best Terminator movie.

That’s gonna give me shit right out of the gate, but whatever. I love the first two Terminator movies, but I find them both to have some issues that keep them from greatness. Terminator 3 also has some issues that keep it from greatness, but it has the best ending of all three by far and action on par with the rest. In a high quality but imperfect franchise, it stands atop the rest by a very small am...