David Vining's Blog, page 205
October 21, 2019
Alien
The title to this movie is so utterly perfect, much like the rest of the film. In terms of straight entertainment, I find Alien to be a pinnacle of tension building terror in film. It’s one of the most thoroughly entertaining horror movies ever made. I love Ridley Scott, I call myself a Ridley Scott fanboi, but he hasn’t matched Alien in his career since though he’s come pretty close.
The Nostromo, a hauling vessel, is pulling tens of millions of tons of ore across the galaxy. It’s crew is in suspended animation for...
October 18, 2019
Exorcist II: The Heretic
Welcome to 1977, David. Everyone else has known that this movie was insane nonsense for more than 40 years, and you just found out. Time to tell the world!
Watch this and Zardoz and tell me the John Boorman is anything other than a crazy person. Read about his proposed adaptation of The Lord of the Rings (that eventually morphed into Excalibur) and tell me that that man is not an absolute nutjob. I have a slight affinity for him, by the way. I think crazy people are the kinds of people studios should occasionally thro...
October 17, 2019
Crisis
(I started writing reviews of the Criterion Collection Bergman films with Wild Strawberries, having missed the first three films. This is the second part of the rectification.)
Ingmar Bergman’s first movie has a handful of charms, but it’s ultimately an unfocused bit of over-assured storytelling that never comes together. It’s the work of a young artist convinced he’s more in control of his narrative abilities than he actually is.
The problem at th...
October 16, 2019
Stanley Kubrick: The Definitive Ranking
13 movies. Not 10. I’m five for five!
Anyway, here’s my latest offering to the listicle gods. Stanley Kubrick’s complete filmography. Kubrick’s canon, those movies that he laid authorship on, was actually only 10 movies. They excluded Fear and Desire, Killer’s Kiss, and Spartacus. But you know that 10 movies is just simply unacceptable.
Kubrick’s films, rated best to worst. Click on the links to get my full reviews.
13. Fear and Desire
“This is the work of an immature, unfocused, and pretentio...
Eyes Wide Shut
This might be the best approximation to the experience of a dream in film. Dreams are hard to realize because they don’t follow a lot of the basic rules of logic and storytelling we’re used to. The only other movie I can think of that works this successfully at building the illogic of a dream is Dario Argento’s Suspiria.
Bill Harford is a doctor in Manhattan whose clientele includes some very rich people. One of these millionaires, Victor, invites him and his wife Alice to a swanky Christma...
October 15, 2019
Full Metal Jacket
I can imagine myself in a few years wondering, “What did I think of that one movie?” I would pull up the blog, do a quick search, find the review, and be refreshed with my attempts at insight. My opinion that day would be reinforced by the opinion I had years back. Full Metal Jacket, though, is a film that I am always certain will have changes of opinion over time. Out of all the films that I have reviewed so far, this is the one that I feel like I could review again in a year and come to ve...
October 14, 2019
The Shining
Analysis of Kubrick’s 1980 horror film tends to devolve into pure symbology, and I find that type of analysis dull at best. I’ve seen breakdowns of the film that range from it being a comment on alcoholism, family breakdown, American history regarding Native Americans, and even the gold standard. These are about sussing out patterns that require either very isolated readings of certain elements or the use of outside factors like Stephen King’s novel in order to support. I prefer to view The...
October 12, 2019
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
This movie was pretty obviously made by someone much more comfortable with the storytelling mechanics of serialized television than a feature film. It’s essentially broken into three parts (one might call them acts, but they’d be a bit incorrect) that feel like individual episodes of a three part television event made almost a decade after the original television show aired.
Jesse Pinkman has escaped his captivity of making crystal meth for skinheads by the gracious hand of all around hero W...
October 11, 2019
Barry Lyndon
Dehumanization is a theme that pops up with some regularity in Stanley Kubrick’s films. From the sacrificial lambs in Paths of Glory to the robotic people of 2001 to the violent criminal robbed of his very choice of behavior in A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick’s films are populated with people struggling to find their humanity within the confines of systems that wish to weed out that spark of life. The setting of Barry Lyndon both lends itself towards this idea while feeling slightly incongruous...
October 10, 2019
A Clockwork Orange
I’ve struggled a bit with this film more than any other Kubrick. The problem is that I think I get it too easily, or I don’t get it at all. I’m never quite sure.
One thing’s for sure, it’s a hard watch at times. Kubrick, taking Anthony Burgess’ novella and running with it, creates a main character so loathsome and charming all at once that it can create a certain dissonance in an audience (Roger Ebert’s review of the original release is a fantastic example of a reviewer who simply could not...
