The Critical List : Westerns

I have a new Critical List up on Eat, Sleep, Live Film and this time it's looking at Westerns:

Over the decades the Western has gone through some marked changes. During the genre’s heyday of the 1930’s and 40’s, Western movies all followed a fairly similar pattern, the good guys wore white hats and saved the day whilst upholding a strict moral code, whilst the bad guys wore black hats, sought to exploit and intimidate the ordinary frontiersman and inevitably lost. Meanwhile the Native Americans were nothing but dangerous savages out to destroy the god-fearing white settlers. By the late 1950’s and into the 1960’s, the distinction between good and bad became slightly more blurred as the gun-slinging anti-hero became more popular and the portrayal of Native Americans became far more compassionate. The harsh reality of the American advance west and the terrible hardships endured by both Native American and settler alike were brought further into focus. Finally, by the late 1960’s and onwards there was the rise of the so-called Spaghetti Western (so called of course because many of them were shot in Italy) a grungy low-fi version of the classic Western with increased violence and added bloodshed.

You can read the full article here:
ESL Film : Critical List - Westerns

UK Cinema Release Round-up : 20th July

Another cinema guide is still up for your enjoyment. It's a rather bat-heavy week this week but there may be some of you who fancy a change of pace. Have a look and see if anything tickles your fancy:

Hey U Guys Cinema Guide

Movie Reviews : No Country For Old Men

Lost in the Multiplex have been running a series of reviews on modern classics over the past few weeks and I have contributed one on the Coen's excellent No Country For Old Men:

The Coen Brothers’ stark neo-western is a striking and unforgettable crime thriller. Released in the same year as There Will Be Blood, the two movies faced off for the Best Picture Oscar and ultimately it was the Coen’s offering which took the big prize. Both movies portrayed the barren elegance of the American West at significantly different times in its history. Based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel by the same name, No Country is set in desolate deepest Texas in 1980 and looks at a rapidly escalating cat-and-mouse chase between a regular Joe, an unflinching psychopathic killer and an ageing Sheriff who bemoans the modern world he struggles to comprehend.


You can read the full review here:
Lost in the Multiplex : No Country For Old Men

UK Cinema Release Round-up : 13th July

Another trawl through the week's cinema releases is up now on Hey U Guys. Go and have yourself a little read:

Hey U Guys : Cinema Release Round-up

7 Baffling Movie Moments

I recently wrote a piece for What Culture about baffling movie moments:

Sometimes, no matter how good a movie is, there comes a moment where you momentarily snap back to reality and it suddenly dawns on you, “hold on, that makes no sense!”. It can be a gaping plot hole or simply a ludicrous decision taken by a character, but these baffling movie moments always seem to prompt considerable discussion.

A number of those listed here are fairly well documented, though I have left out a few of the more infamous examples. Who shot Nice Guy Eddie? Who heard Charles Foster Kane say Rosebud in the first place? Why does James Bond go around telling everybody his real name? I’m sure there are many more which warrant a place on the list too which didn’t quite make the cut.

You can read the full article here:

What Culture : 7 Baffling Movie Moments

UK Cinema Release Round-up : 6th July

This week's cinema guide is up now for your reading pleasure. There's loads out this week, something to cater to every taste, even if your taste is generic bubblegum pop music.


As predicted last week, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter didn’t last long at the top of the Box Office and dropped down to sixth place in its second week with Prometheus being the main beneficiary as it moved back up into second spot.

“But  Rob, what was in first place?” I hear you all cry. Well dear readers, it’s a little animated number called Ice Age 4: Continental Drift. “But wait, you didn’t include that film in your comprehensive cinema guide last week!” I hear you splutter in shock. You are right there folks and that’s because Ice Age 4 : Continental Drift doesn’t open in England and Wales until the 13th July, but it has already opened in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Sales in those areas alone were enough to send it to the top of the cinematic pile, but as a result, Continental Drift became the lowest-grossing number one at the Box Office since Nicholas Cage’s Next back in April 2007.

You can read the full article here:

Hey U Guys : Cinema Guide

Movie Reviews : The Battle of Algiers

I recently reviewed the seminal guerrilla war movie The Battle of Algiers for Hey U Guys:


Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 war film tells the turbulent story of the Algerian campaign for independence from France between the years of 1954 and 1962. It remains an incredibly powerful and engrossing depiction of insurgency, guerrilla warfare and hard-line retaliatory tactics used by a dominant colonial army.

In the nation’s capital Algiers, the fight of Algerian independence was led by the National Liberation Front (FLN) who resorted to increasingly devastating and shocking tactics to achieve their aims. They regularly assassinated policemen, officials and civilians, and spread fear throughout the city’s European populous with a string of deadly bombings. After their attacks, the FLN would then retreat back into the crowded Arabic area of the city called the Casbah and thus proved incredibly difficult to root out.

You can read the full review here:
Hey U Guys : The Battle of Algiers

Best of Batman Comics

I recently contributed to a piece on Lost in the Multiplex looking at the best Batman graphic novels and how we would translate them into a movie. I went for Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's legendary take on the Joker's origins, The Killing Joke.


Arguably the definitive Joker story in the Bat-canon, Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's The Killing Joke is a classic one-shot Batman graphic novel which charts the origins of the Joker’s madness and explores what can happen to both good and bad people after having ‘one bad day’. In Moore’s disturbing vision of the Clown Prince of Crime’s descent into madness, the Joker starts out as an unnamed worker at a chemical plant who quits his job to pursue a career in stand-up comedy. After failing miserably, he becomes desperate to support his pregnant wife and so takes a job with some unsavoury characters, acting as their guide when they break into the chemical plant where he once worked. Tragedy strikes however when he learns from the police that his wife has died in a household accident. His criminal employers are unmoved by his awful misfortune though and refuse to let him drop out of the break in.


You can read the full article here:
Lost In The Multiplex : Best of Batman Comics

Six Of The Best : Graphic Novel Adaptations

I recently did an article for Hey U Guys looking at the best movie adaptations of graphic novels:

When adapting a popular graphic novel for the big screen the director and his team face any number of challenges. Perhaps the most difficult of all is keeping the legion of source material fanboys happy, a feat which often boarders on the impossible.
 
While an entirely faithful adaptation is simply not always possible due to the wildly different media in which movies and graphic novels operate, the best graphic novel adaptations are always careful to embrace their source material and give heed to what made it popular in the first place.

A small disclaimer at this point. It can be a little tricky to define what constitutes a ‘graphic novel’ and some of those listed below were actually comic book series initially that were then compiled into one whole novel. However, without getting bogged down in definitions, let’s just say I’m only including work based on a specific story-arc that rose to prominence in its graphic novel form.
Not all adaptations need to retain every single element of their original creation right down to their very look (though some of the best ones undeniably do). What really makes a great adaptation is whether they capture the themes, mood and tones the source material sort to convey in the first place.

The six movies selected here differ wildly in terms of their content and especially in their visual style, yet all six are incredibly striking and memorable movies in their own right.


You can read the full article here:
Hey U Guys : Graphic Novel Adaptations

Movie Reviews : Batman Returns

With the impending release of The Dark knight Returns nearly upon us, Lost in the Multiplex has begun looking back at all the previous Bat movie outings. I recently took a look at Tim Burton's Batman Returns:

Tim Burton’s second Batman outing was a typically stylish, gothic (I’ll try not to use this word too much) and nightmarish vision of the Bat legend. Granted much greater creative control than with his first Batman movie after that film’s incredible success at the box office, the director assembled another impressive cast and created some deliciously deranged and tortured characters for them to play with. Whilst the director himself hasn’t always agreed, I’d go as far as to say that this movie was a far darker affair than its predecessor. The violence seems somehow stronger, the sexual fetishisation is more prevalent and the recurring theme of childhood trauma and its mentally scarring affects is thrust to the fore.

You can read the full article here:
Lost in the Multiplex : Batman Returns

UK Cinema Release Round-up : 29th June

Another weekly dose of cinematic delights is up for you to feast upon. There's been a lot of semi-promising romantic comedies out in the past few weeks, Five-year Engagament, Friends With Kids, You're Sister's Sister......I'm still yet to go and see any of them mind you. This week's must-see though is definitely Killer Joe.

Have yourself a read here:
Hey U Guys : Cinema Guide