Ziad Shihab

Showing all posts tagged "Filmqueue"

Killer - The

August 25th, 2024

John Woo’s "The Killer" was a true gamechanger, at least for this critic. The one-two punch of Woo’s 1989 action masterpiece with his equally magnificent "Hard Boiled" changed the way I looked at the genre in my teens, and truly inspired hundreds of imitators. For anyone in my age range who can remember watching "The Killer" (likely on VHS) decades ago, the thought of remaking a flawless film feels cinematically heretical. And yet Hollywood has been circling such a project for decades with Ri...

Coup

August 3rd, 2024

Peter Sarsgaard in Coup! (Greenwich Entertainment)The year is 1918. The Spanish flu is raging. Mega rich muckraking journalist Jay Horton (Billy Magnussen) has holed up in his mansion on Egg Island with his family and servants writing screeds against the federal government’s handling of the pandemic. (Sound familiar?) He writes eyewitness accounts of the working man, except he is not an eyewitness at all. He makes it up—and he is very popular. To cook the family’s meals during the quarantine,...

REVIEW of - THE KEY - 1958

July 21st, 2024

By Lee Pfeiffer A year after their Oscar-winning triumph, The Bridge on the River Kwai, William Holden and writer/producer Carl Foreman teamed again for another drama set in WWII, The Key. The 1958 drama is primarily a love story but there is plenty of action on the high seas, all superbly photographed in B&W by the great Oswald Morris. The offbeat story is set in England in the early days of the war before America entered the conflict. Britain stands alone against the seemingly unstoppab...

Horror Movies About Making Movies - more than 80 of them

June 25th, 2024

Table of ContentsMovies about filmmakers and the process of making movies have been around for ages. It makes sense. After all, what’s one subject that most filmmakers are interested in? Movies, of course. But while many films about filmmaking focus on the wonder and power inherent in movie magic, there is a dark side to everything. That means there is no shortage of horror movies that focus on film productions.Horror movies about making movies fall into a wide variety of subgenres. Many have...

Hit Man - All the Famous Killer Easter Eggs

June 18th, 2024

This article contains spoilers for Hit Man."People are disappointed when they learn that hit men don’t really exist," explains Gary Johnson. That might be a surprising statement given that it occurs early on in a movie called Hit Man. Throughout the film, Gary (Glen Powell) dons different disguises to meet with people who want to pay him money (or video games or boats) to kill people. But then again, it’s all a ruse, a police sting operation that mild-mannered teacher Gary does as a side gig....

Longlegs Screens at Beyond Fest to More Raves

June 2nd, 2024

Neon is really pushing hard for us to notice Oz Perkins’ upcoming "Longlegs," and know what? It’s working. They’ve released three cryptic teasers, a trailer, around half a dozen posters and even low-key screenedthe film, a few months, before its release, for a handful of carefully selected horror-affiliated critics.Another unannounced screening occurred on Friday evening, at Beyond Fest, and we have more raves for this film, which seems to have been spawned and nurtured in the fiery furnaces ...

Modern movies which incorporate absurdism

May 30th, 2024

From David Lynch's debut 'Eraserhead' to Yorgos Lanthimos' quirky romance 'The Lobster', here are five movies which use absurdism within their narratives. Cover Story: Joanna Sternberg BFI: Italian Neorealism (Credit: Press / Focus World)Film » Features » Lists ...

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Anything can happen in the film The Square

May 26th, 2024

'Anything Can Happen in This Movie': The Sheer Satirical Brilliance of 'The Square' Ruben Östlund has made monkeying around an art form. Jon Fusco Oct 06, 2017 No one is safe from the satirical grip of the Swedish auteur Ruben Östlund. Even the audiences and jury at Cannes 2017, where his latest filmThe Square received multiple awards, were no more than a joke at his expense. "The aim of the film was that we should be accepted in competition," he explained. "I loved the idea that when the com...

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Something Old - New - Borrowed - Autofictional Film

May 21st, 2024

From High on Films blogThere’s a real thrill in watching a film bend style and form, both captivating and surprising in using a mix of techniques. Even if the narrative ground it covers may seem featureless and generic at first glance, the film offsets expectations by infusing familiar templates with a dash of innovation in its aesthetic choices. What could have been easily predictable and dull turns exciting and invigoratingly fresh. This is what Argentinian filmmaker Hernan Rosselli accompl...

Best Mystery Movies of All Time

May 21st, 2024

There's something comforting about settling in to watch a good mystery movie. You sort of know exactly what to expect. I watch a ton of mystery movies because I think they are wonderful at getting audiences excited about their premises and clearly defining their stakes. Mystery movies have captivated audiences for generations, weaving intricate plots, enigmatic characters, and thrilling suspense. Their ability to transport us to worlds of intrigue and challenge our deductive skills is what ma...

More Happy Accidents - Accidentally Preserved - Vol 5

May 21st, 2024

By Jeremy Carr. Ben Model and his Undercrank Productions continue to deliver eclectic fare from the annals of film history, distributing movies that shed light on their respective era, their audiences, and their creators."Given the nature of what is discovered, handled, and ultimately distributed as part of the Accidentally Preserved series, a fair amount of variety is to be expected. Accrued from private collections of rare 16mm prints—"Show-at-Home" versions of a studio’s 35mm offerings—div...

Road House - 2024

May 9th, 2024

Rowdy Herrington’s Road House (1989) slipped through the cracks of screen culture in its era, but quickly became a cult object exemplifying that era. A subject for controversy for its over-the-top violence, apparently from those afraid teenage girls lusting after star Patrick Swayze after Dirty Dancing (1987) might go see it and learn interesting ways to break bones, Road House still failed to entice the kinds of action movie fans it needed, who apparently didn’t buy Swayze as a genre star, o...

Don Siegel - The Shootist

May 9th, 2024

By Jeremy CarrJust as crucial to The Shootist is what Books leaves behind, which, prior to the beginning of the film, was nothing more than his dubious exploits and the tales that followed. By the end of the film, though, there is something more."It obviously isn’t necessary to know an actor’s life story in order to assess their performance in a given film. Nor is it a requirement to have seen every one of the actor’s prior films. However, there is a distinct satisfaction and appreciation tha...

THE BEAST: An Unnerving Collage of Henry James, Sci-Fi, and Angry Young Men

May 4th, 2024

Director Bertrand Bonello‘s The Beast, co-written with Guillaume Bréaud and Benjamin Charbit, is purportedly inspired by a Henry James novella. The Beast in The Jungle is about a man beset with loneliness and fears of a fatalistic event likened to an unseen beast haunting him. His primary talking partner is a lady he never allows to get too close to him, thus pulling her into his aloof orbit. In the film’s hook, bearing only a passing resemblance to Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, a...

Cop Hater - 1958

May 2nd, 2024

From Dr of DoomCop Hater is a 1958 American crime B-movie based on one of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels. Since it’s a crime movie shot in black-and-white a lot of people have succumbed to the temptation to assume it’s film noir. It isn’t. Not even close. It’s a tough police procedural, just as the Ed McBain novels are police procedurals. It’s a hot day in the city. Apparently all it takes is a hot day and everyone goes crazy and starts killing people. A cop named Reardon gets gunned down i...

Hackers

April 30th, 2024

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle, John and special guest Laura Hudson (formerly of Wired and The Verge) watched the 1995 cyber-thriller "Hackers," directed by Ian Softley and starring Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Fisher Stevens and Lorraine Bracco, with supporting roles for Matthew Lillard, Penn Jillette, Wendell Pierce, Marc Anthony and Felicity Huffman."Hackers" centers on Dade Murphy, alias "Zero Cool," who made hacking history 7 years before the events of...

PITFALL - 1962

April 27th, 2024

Otoshiana366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.DIRECTED BY: Hiroshi TeshigaharaFEATURING: Hisashi Igawa, Sumie Sasaki, Kunie TanakaPLOT:A miner in search for work is led to a ghost town where he’ll become embroiled in a plot involving manipulation, trade unions, and doppelgangers.COMMENTS: Pitfall was the first of a series of collaborations between Hiroshi Teshigahara (director), author Kobo Abe (screenwriter), and Toru Takemitsu (composer); the trio ...

Starship Troopers - Heinlein and Realism

April 26th, 2024

Robert Heinlein was one of the "big three" science fiction writers of his era.  Along with Arthur C. Clark and Isaac Asimov, his prize-winning stories were hailed, and his critique of conventional norms, such as nonviolence and pacifism, captivated his audience.  In particular, the 1959 book Starship Troopers illustrated political and religious issues that continue to engage Christian Realists today.  The book takes brutal aim at pacifism, and thirty-eight years later it was made into the pop...

TO DIE FOR Review - This Film Kills

April 24th, 2024

For most of its residents, the frigid burgh of Little Hope, New Hampshire can’t help but live up to its town’s moniker.  A perpetually blah place with an unromantic blue collar frozen-in-time and also freezing quality, its denizens have been long resigned not to ask too much of life. Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this.But not for Suzanne Stone-Maretto.  For this young, recently wed career-minded woman, her frigidity comes from within.  Portrayed with an exacting edge by Nicol...

Mind-Bending Movies That Feature Dark Twists | Wealth of Geeks

March 29th, 2024

26 Mind-Bending Movies That Feature Dark Twists | Wealth of Geeks 26 Mind-Bending Movies That Feature Dark Twists | Wealth of Geeks https://flip.it/0kBrb5What's your favorite aspect of a film? For countless film buffs, it's that precise moment when all of your preconceived notions about where the story is going

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Anton Corbijn to Direct Switzerland - Set to Shoot This Fall

March 13th, 2024

I exclusively reported last year about this project. Dutch filmmaker Anton Corbijn is preparing to shoot a new film, his first feature in over nine years, titled "Switzerland." We now know that production is expected to begin in the fall of 2024.The film will tackle a fictional version of author, Patricia Highsmith, involved in a stressful relationship with her ambitious literary agent. Highsmith, who spent the last days of her life in Switzerland, will be played by British actress Helen Mirr...

Midsommar Ending Explained

March 12th, 2024

There is nothing more satisfying to me than a horror story that manipulates the protagonist into a contributing villain. Midsommar does this through the blinding daylight sequences that do not hide the horrors of this small Swedish community in an ancestral commune in the woods. The A24 daylight horror Midsommar, Ari Aster’s follow-up to his directorial debut Hereditary, took the world by storm, helping revive the folk horror genre while scaring us from stepping into the woods at any time of...

Banel and Adama – cinema as fairytale

March 11th, 2024

Banel (Khady Mane) and Adama (Mamadou Diallo) are a beautiful couple, introduced on the arid plains of Senegal, clad in yellow and red respectively. They float through their day’s work of cow-herding in a harmonious, almost dreamlike state. Banel closes her eyes against the blistering sun, hiding from reality by finding meaning in the flashing lights, or phosphenes, left behind in her vision. In this opening sequence, the pair exist in a montage of almost stock videos, in primary colours and ...