Posts

Darkman (1990) ***1/2

Image
I miss this era of filmmaking. Over the top, theatrical, gothic, slightly campy superhero/comic book movies like Tim Burton 's  Batman   (1989) ( review ),  Warren Beatty 's  Dick Tracy (1990), and  Sam Raimi 's  Darkman   (1990) are my jam. Coincidentally,  Danny Elfman  scored all three—the composer was in his prime, on a truly impressive run from 1988–1990, scoring a whopping 10 films! The last time I watched Darkman was almost 10 years ago to the day and it was even better than I remembered. Taking inspiration from  Universal Monsters  (in particular 1933's  The Invisible Man   ( review ), with its gleefully vindictive “hero”),   Raimi—with all his weirdness, particular humor ("take the fucking elephant!"), cartoonish violence, dutch angles, frenetic camerawork, and visual inventiveness—created a truly bizarre but very entertaining picture. Some of the optical effects haven’t held up well (charmingly so), but the goopy, gory makeup effects are fantastic.

The Danman Top 100 Films (2024 Edition)

Image
10 years (and one day) ago, I created my Top 100 Films  (the Letterboxd list for that 2014 edition is  here ). Five years (and one day) ago, I created the 2019 edition of my Top 100 Films (the Letterboxd list for the 2019 edition is here ). Since I decided to task myself with reevaluating this list every five years, here we are with the 2024 edition. I set similar criteria for myself as I did in 2014 and 2019: 1. I had to currently own a physical copy of the film on Blu-ray or 4K UHD. This potentially meant that there would be films missing from the list that would have been included. Ironically,  Blue Velvet   (1986) ( review ) got snubbed for the second time because  The Criterion Collection  just announced that they are releasing the film on 4K UHD in June, so I had already set aside my Blu-ray copy to sell, in anticipation of upgrading that title (the same thing happened five years ago when CC announced their Blu-ray edition). The biggest omission this time around is  Sergio Leone

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) ***1/2

Image
I've been a fan of  "Weird Al" Yankovic  since I was seven or eight years old. I distinctly remember listening to his cassettes on my boombox, right alongside the artists he parodied, like  Michael Jackson  and  Huey Lewis & The News . I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed  Weird: The Al Yankovic Story   (2022) and it held up well on a rewatch. Al and co-writer/director  Eric Appel  made the right choice in making the film a parody itself (of music biopics). The blurred lines of what actually happened and what didn't (most of the movie and all of which should be fairly obvious to even the casual fan) is a lot of what makes it fun. Not all the jokes land and the film could have been 15 minutes shorter, but I definitely laughed out loud plenty of times (again) and  Daniel Radcliffe  and  Evan Rachel Wood  knock it out of the park. Recommended for fans of  UHF   (1989) (which I had the great pleasure of seeing in a theater with an Al Q&A in 2017),  Thi

The Roaring Twenties (1939) ****

Image
A pivotal gangster film, released in what is often regarded as the greatest year in film history , filled with wonderful performances (including the always charismatic Cagney plus unsung hero  Gladys George ) and classic songs, and beautifully paced.  Raoul Walsh 's The Roaring Twenties  (1939) is an influential and immensely entertaining picture with a perfectly satisfying ending. Raoul Walsh Feature Films Ranked

Leviathan (1989) ***

Image
I thought that upon revisiting  Leviathan  (1989) it might be better than I remembered, but it's still a bit mediocre. I don't know if director  George P. Cosmatos  is to blame, because the pedigree of this film is so impressive (actors  Peter Weller , Richard Crenna , Daniel Stern , and  Ernie Hudson ; composer Jerry Goldsmith ; production designer Ron Cobb ; special effects designers  Stan Winston ,  Tom Woodruff Jr. , and Alec Gillis ) that's it's puzzling why it didn't turn out better.  The production values are high and some of the effects are quite good, but the movie is never exciting. I think part of it is because Leviathan is too much like  Alien   (1979) ( review ) and  The Thing  (1982) ( review ) and part of it is because the stock characters never rise above tropes. The action in the finale is not shot particularly well either (which is odd because, comparatively, Cosmatos' Rambo: First Blood Part II  (1985) and  Cobra   (1986) ( review ) feature gr