Film Features
Back to the grind(house): Why "Death Proof" might be Tarantino's secret masterpiece
- 18 Aug 10
It’s been a full year now since the release of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, his sixth (seventh if you count Kill Bill as two separate entities) and most recent full-length feature. Upon its release, Basterds was largely hailed as a kind of comeback. The director’s pals at Empire declared it 'an often dazzling movie that sees QT back on exhilarating form', and - Peter Bradshaw’s infamous pan in The Guardian aside - many of the reviews took a similar tack. My question, though, is this: from what kind of form is Tarantino supposed to have come back?
Brazen Best of Movies 07
- 20 Jan 08
Chris Vs. Summer - Weeks Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen & Seventeen: The End
- 06 Sep 07
This is it, folks. After four months and, by the end of this article, fourteen films, Chris Vs. Summer is over. I would say until next year, but for now I have no intention of repeating it. At this point I'm petitioning for Steve Vs. Summer. But that's next year. Right now we've got this summer to finish, and there's a proper dark night of the soul and everything to get through before the light at the end of the tunnel. Get ready for the horror of Rush Hour 3 and Evan Almighty, followed by the salvation of The Bourne Ultimatum and Knocked Up. It's like the scary bit at the end of Fantasia, only with Chris Tucker as the big demon and a load of dick jokes instead of the torchlit procession.
Chris Vs. Summer - Weeks Eleven, Twelve & Thirteen: Harry Potter, Transformers and The Simpsons
- 04 Aug 07
It's Childhood Obsessions week here at Chris Vs. Summer, with three films released based on sources outside the world of film of which I've partaken, to a greater or lesser degree, at some point during my formative years.First up - Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix. I make no apologies for reading the Harry Potter books. I do, however, make an excuse, and it's this: I was eleven when Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone was published (and, more importantly, when I read it), making me the same age as the titular trainee wizard and so more or less exactly the book's target audience. Had Rowling stuck to the original book-a-year plan, I would have aged alongside Harry, finishing high school at the same time he left Hogwarts. As it is, she began to publish one every two years after the release of The Prisoner Of Azkaban in 1999, meaning Harry has only just reached seventeen with the release of the seventh and final book, leaving me, at twenty-one, officially a slightly embarrassed adult who nevertheless has to know how the story began a decade ago finishes. As Gav so eloquently put it, I am part of a generation of J.K. Rowling's bitches.
Chris Vs. Summer - Weeks Eight, Nine & Ten: Shrek The Third and Die Hard 4.0
- 11 Jul 07
Ten weeks in, and still not a single blockbuster that hasn't been a sequel. It's gotten to the point where 'sequel' no longer stands as a distinct category in its own right, and has to be split up even further into specific sub-genres. So far this year, we've had Surprisingly Good (28 Weeks Later), Surprisingly Not-So-Good (Spider-Man 3), Improvement On A Crappy Forerunner [Large] (Ocean's Thirteen), Improvement On A Crappy Forerunner [Barely Noticeable] (Pirates Of The Caribbean) and Hard To Justify On Any Level, Artistic, Commercial Or Otherwise (Fantastic Four). Well, this week, Pretentiously Named In-Joke Craptacular Extravaganzas just gained two new members, courtesy of Shrek The Third and Die Hard 4.0.