Solid until it isn't.
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No Sudden Move 2021
Yeah, idk. Not as smart as it wants to be, nor as much fun as it could have been. Adored the first thirty minutes (up until the first death), but my attention gradually waned from that point forward, till, at the end, I was just waiting for things to wrap up, uninterested in what became of the characters. Fun performances from Cheadle, Del Toro, and Harbor. Lame stunt casting. Felt like the film tried to make some big STATEMENT, on…
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Mean Streets 1973
Second viewing confirms that this is very much a rough draft for the masterworks to come, but sometimes rough drafts are more revealing than their more polished successors. In Mean Streets, we can already see the tics that would come to define Scorsese’s style: the hyperactive camera and the incessant music, most notably, but I would also point to, among other things, the fluctuation between realism and expressionism (best exemplified by the concluding drive) and the consideration of what it means…
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Raise the Red Lantern 1991
A few words on the film’s setting:
The Master’s compound (I struggle to come up with a more appropriate word for it; “castle” suggests verticality) plays such a central role in the narrative that I’d be shocked if Zhang Yimou conceived of the film without having the location in mind. It’s important in a few ways, first and foremost in its austerity, which acts as a canvas for Yimou’s characteristic flourishes. The red of the lanterns wouldn’t be so striking…
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