David Vining's Blog, page 56

Two Evil Eyes

George Romero and Dario Argento teamed together to make a pair of short films based on Edgar Allan Poe stories. Out of the two, I think that Romero comes out better of the pair, having a generally strong sense of story and character, but both are a bit overlong and drawn out. Still, as little ditties in their respective wheelhouses, they’re entertaining entertainments.

The first is “The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar,” directed by Romero. It centers around Jessica (Adrienne Barbeau), w...

Monkey Shines

Trying once again to leave the zombie picture behind, George Romero spent years trying to get different projects off the ground, most notably an adaptation of Stephen King’s Pet Semetary that never came to fruition. He did eventually get his next film moving with this adaptation of the novel of the same name by Michael Stewart. It has a certain King-esque feel to it, taking something normal and what should be benign and giving it evil import, but there’s something deeply off about the execut...

Day of the Dead

I do not understand the reappraisal Day of the Dead has gotten in the years since its release. It is…not a good movie. Like, at all. It’s bad. Characters are threadbare in all the wrong ways while they posture heavily. There’s no real story. The world-building makes no sense. It was an effort by Romero to, as he put it, make the Gone with the Wind of zombie movies, but his grand budget of seven million dollars was slashed in half and he had to quickly rewrite everything in order for it all t...

Creepshow

George Romero and Stephen King were good friends and found a way to work together beyond King making an obnoxious cameo in Knightriders. They also have a shared love for the EC series Tales from the Crypt. So, without actually paying for the rights, the two came up with an imitation anthology series. Heavily inspired visually by Dario Argento’s brand of giallo cinema in Italy (and probably in no small part by Romero’s large affection for the work by The Archers on films like The Red Shoes an...

Knightriders

There’s something key in understanding an artist when they take up a project after a big success. Dawn of the Dead was the film that finally got George Romero out of debt and the ability to command decent budgets, and what did he do with that success first? He made a kind of goofy retelling of the Arthurian legend with knights on motorcycles that’s still deeply earnest in its depiction of its characters. It was already obvious from films like Season of the Witch and Martin that while he was ...

Dawn of the Dead

Probably George Romero’s best regarded and most well-known film, Dawn of the Dead is the movie that got him out of heavy debt and brought his first real success that he could actually participate in (his previous successes, namely Night of the Living Dead, being marred by distribution deals that got him nothing). It’s also of a species with Night of the Living Dead as having meaning imposed upon it by viewers that the film barely supports (it’s more justifiable here than in the previous film...

Martin

Reportedly George Romero’s favorite of his own films, Martin is more Season of the Witch and less Dawn of the Dead. It’s obvious that Romero’s heart was in character-based dramas that blended the worlds of the real and horror. He also said that his early films, in particular, were more products of their times than efforts at social commentary, despite his reputation. The result here is an interesting look at a young man, convinced that he’s a vampire who might just be an awkward kid with no ...

The DCEU Franchise Ranking: Revisited

So, five more movies, if you can call them that. And the DCEU is in the books as done.

I really didn’t expect The Flash to be my favorite of the death throws of the DCEU, but here we are. The franchise that started overearnestly and too quickly by giving too much creative control to Zach Snyder and then flailing about when Zach Snyder kept making Zach Snyder movies instead of Marvel movies had to die at some point.

So, the ranking is completed…again. It’s here below (I’ve also updated the ...

Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom

Well, it’s better than the first Aquaman, at least. The sequel is a giant mess of noise and color that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but some individual pieces are lightly amusing. It’s not quite the complete dredge that was the first film’s road picture that never worked on any level. This is more like five different movies in one, none of which work, but there are some small moments here and there. Bleh. It’s still crap, though.

So, Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) is the Aquaman, and he...

The Amusement Park

Presumed lost for decades, this informational film from George Romero, commissioned by the Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania, is nominally a plea for help in tending to the elderly, the added bookends of the film making it explicit. However, the Society didn’t know what to do with the surrealist experiment Romero came up with that reflects a David Lynch film more than a straightforward effort to get young people to be nicer to old people and volunteer for support organizations...