Even as such a massive fan of all things Lynch I'd had the pleasure of taking in, I had never seen ERASERHEAD (or ELEPHANT MAN or INLAND EMPIRE for that matter) until today. I think more than anything it was the thought that once I had seen all his films, I wouldn't be able to experience them for the first time ever again. I'm well aware that the art he made is the exact type of art that changes and…
CRIMES OF THE FUTURE was my first time back in the theater since March of 2019 and it was also my first Cronenberg on the big screen. Oh, how I missed it.
Anyway, the movie's fantastic. I'd purposely read nothing on it to go in cold and I have a lot of thoughts, many of which have probably already been written more eloquently by more astute viewers so forgive me if my takeaways are redundant. But to me this is…
Despite my preference for James Wong's goofy stylistic flourishes over Steven Quale's spit-shined slickness and this being a lesser ensemble in the series, FINAL DESTINATION 5 is probably the cream of the franchise crop — the deaths are all killer no filler, the FX (though still largely digital) are executed very well, the script has some fun with advancing the mythology, and the ending is fantastic. The dark humor is high in the mix here as well, the whole thing…
It seems everyone involved with THE FINAL DESTINATION learned all the wrong lessons from the success of its predecessors. Loads of weightless CGI slop, a rough cast (outside the innocent Mykelti Williamson), and a bad script do not a good movie make. The flat TV-movie direction David R. Ellis struggled with between his spectacular kill setpieces in FINAL DESTINATION 2 seems to be the default setting here, not a single sequence rivalling even the least impressive one from that entry. No Tony Todd. It opens with a fucking Shinedown song.
Woof.
Apocalyptic Duality.
Jordan Peele is a master filmmaker, in every sense of the term. His writing is dense, filled to the gills with breadcrumbs and double entendre. Yet, somehow it's also light and always entertaining. His direction is steady, unrushed. Yet, his calculated pacing and knack for musical cues lend an air of almost Amblin-esque charm to everything he touches. I'm unsure of his exact technique for working with actors, but damned if every single performer we see isn't perfectly…
Not at all what I had expected from three decades of build-up with having only seen the few clips of this that invariably end up on any "cinematic greatest hits" montage; it's less fun, more lyrical, and generally a different beast than I had come to expect from watching mostly later-career Spielberg growing up. This isn't to say that this film doesn't feel like his work (it has all the character touchstones we've come to expect), it's just riding a…
