Filmikaze!

Psycho remains one of my two favorite Hitchcock films, even after I’ve spent all term catching up on many of the ones I haven’t seen. (For the record, my other favorite is Rear Window, which I highly recommend to everyone.) Even were I to indulge in Hitchcock’s entire catalog and meticulously pick apart every film he’s made, Psycho will always remain a favorite for all of the reasons that it is so iconic. This is a film that legitimately makes me excited about the craft of filmmaking every, single time I view it.

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Chris Nolan: Destined to be the most overrated director of our time.

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I fully admit it: I prejudge movies by their poster. Given that the entire intent of motion picture PR is to get you to believe a film is good enough to see just by its poster, I guess that makes sense. The thing is, sometimes the marketing team goes horribly wrong and I see a poster, like the one for Exam, for instance, and mistakenly believe it’s going to be a tired hybrid of The Apprentice and the Saw movies.

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I am, amazingly, a fan of the original Nightmare on Elm Street series—For a certain value of “fan,” at least. Since I was a kid, I’ve seen most to all of the original films (Most of them tend to blend together), and while I enjoy them, it isn’t because I think they’re high art. I will say this much, though: Freddy Krueger has always terrified me on some primal, human level, and I think that’s why I’ve always liked the Elmstreet films. It’s fun to be scared, even if it’s mostly ridiculous.

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One of the aspects of slasher flicks that I love best is how they have a long-standing tradition of showing that girls can take care of themselves.

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It’s fair to take the tone of the original into consideration when judging the remake, and under those B-movie horror standards, it does pretty well.

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It’s one of the best movie-going experiences, I think, when a film completely exceeds your expectations.

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What starts out as a wistful, meandering homecoming tale shoots off into a riveting mystery that keeps you wondering right up until the whopper of an ending.

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Dogville is the third of Lars von Trier’s films I’ve seen, and has solidified him in my mind as one of the most formidable contemporary filmmaking talents in the world.

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Martin Scorsese and I don’t really get along, I’ll just say that up front. I can recognize that he’s a good director, but anytime I see some of his work it reaffirms for me that he’s not the director for me. Shutter Island isn’t any different, although I will say that it was more enjoyable than I expected.

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