David Vining's Blog, page 57

Shazam: Fury of the Gods

After the dreary mess that was Black Adam, it’s nice to have a filmmaker who has a basic understanding of structure taking the helm of a film. Granted, the Shazam sequel is still overstuffed and confused, but at least David F. Sandberg is able to take the script by Henry Gayden and Chris Morgan and come out of production and editing with something resembling a cohesive story going on. It helps that he actually allows his star to have a bit of fun, as well, but while this may be the height of...

There’s Always Vanilla

Well, it’s obvious that Romero has talent outside of the limited confines of a single farmhouse in the remote inner country of Pennsylvania, but he’s also entirely reliant on a script being written for him to apply that skills effectively. The script by Rudolph Ricci is a half-formed idea about the younger generation wanting more and the idea of settling (the title comes from a line late in the film), but characterization is way too thin, it meanders for long stretches, and the final point i...

Update on Two Filmmakers

So, there have been some rumblings on a couple of filmmakers that I’ve completed runs of.

The first is Peter Weir saying at the Festival de la Cinémathèque in Paris that he’s definitely, surely retired:

“I am retired,” Weir said when asked about his 14 year hiatus from filmmaking. “Why did I stop cinema? Because, quite simply, I have no more energy.”

I’d always want another Weir film, but his last few years of trying to put a project together just broke him, it seems.

The second ...

Black Adam

I really get the sense that Dwayne Johnson was the main creative force behind this film, that the director, Jaume Collet-Serra, provided little more than the stylistic dressing on top of the overstuffed and terribly structured story that plays out underneath. It’s pretty obvious that Johnson was seeing his portrayal as the titular Black Adam to be the cornerstone of a brand new direction for the entire DCEU. Never mind that the movie is kind of just outright terrible, but it also happened to...

Completing the DCEU: A Statement of Purpose

So, a long while back, I did the films in the DC Extended Universe as they were, ending at Birds of Prey. I also ended up reviewing Wonder Woman 1984 and The Suicide Squad, folding them into the inevitable ranking.

Well, with the DCEU officially dead after the hiring of James Gunn (despite his best efforts at being a good corporate lackey and pumping up every release between his hiring and the start of production on his own first entry in the new DCU, Superman), I realized that I had left...

Night of the Living Dead

George A. Romero, partner in the company The Latent Image, a filmmaking firm that specialized in commercials and industrial films, pulled together the minimal funds for a horror film, something purely marketable, and worked over nine months to film the script he cowrote with John Russo. The result is a surprisingly accomplished work visually that brings together the basic elements of thrilling cinema into an exciting package of horror that helped cement the modern rules of zombies in fil...

George A. Romero: A Statement of Purpose

Should I have left this until October? Maybe I should have left this until October.

Anyway, I’ve decided to take on the work of the zombie maestro…who kind of hated how his first film got associated with the word zombie. Why, though?

Romero reminds me of Wes Craven from afar. Not only known for horror films, both started in horror because it was at the same time cheap and marketable, they also never wanted to be exclusively horror filmmakers, later known precisely for that.

Romero’s...

Robert E. Howard: The Definitive Ranking

It really seems like almost no one is actually interested in adapting Robert E. Howard for the screen. It kind of reminds me of the handful of adaptations of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, all of which change the story significantly. It’s not a matter of which are good and which are bad, either. It’s just that the people who have taken the reins of the franchise over the decades have been uninterested in the weird, brutal horrors that Conan regularly fought, choosing to view characters like...

Conan the Barbarian (2011)

#4 in my ranking of films adapted from Robert E. Howard’s works.

This is one of those movies that I don’t actually think is good, everyone else thinks is terrible, and every time I get into a discussion about it, I end up defending it almost to the point of arguing that it’s good. It’s not, though. I just tend to be a bit more positive about it than almost everyone else. It does some things I like. I does a fair amount I don’t like. The attempt to reboot the Robert E. Howard character for...

Solomon Kane

The third of Robert E. Howard’s creations to get a cinematic adaptation, Solomon Kane is a grim, accomplished action/adventure that provides a backstory to the titular Puritan warrior that pulses along at a nice pace, telling its story clearly and cleanly. For all its grimness, it still has a certain sense of fun to it as the titular warrior faces off against unnatural evil across the English countryside with enough character work to make the journey more than just a series of fights. M.J. B...