Lonely at the Top: Michelangelo Antonioni’s ‘Blow Up’

 Copyright © 2010 by James Clark       There is a moment, in the middle of Blow-Up (1966), which seems the right starting point for us. A busy young commercial photographer and Londoner-about-town, “Thomas,” pores over reams of negatives covering an impromptu shoot in a park. That bit of seizing the moment had begun to take [...]

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32. The Fly

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33. Inside (À l’intérieur)

(Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, 2007) (essay by Jamie) Modern Horror of note almost always falls in 2, maybe 3 categories. First, there’s the art Horror of In My Skin, Trouble Every Day, Antichrist, Gozu, Noriko’s Dinner Table, A Serbian Film, and Taxidermia that both shock, confuse, and stimulate all at once. They exist to [...]

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Waltz with Bashir (Best of the 21st Century?)

by Joel #87 in Best of the 21st Century?, a series in which I view, for the first time, some of the most critically acclaimed films of the previous decade. The movie opens with black dogs, growling, yelping, barking as they race down a busy city street – hounds from hell whose presence puts the [...]

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34. The Seventh Victim

(Mark Robson, 1943) (essay by Troy) I run to death and death meets me as fast, and all my pleasures are like yesterday Bookended with that verse by John Donne, the rushing urgency of impending death is firmly in place over the scant 71 minutes of Val Lewton’s The Seventh Victim (Mark Robson acquits himself [...]

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Death by Hanging – 1968, Nagisa Oshima

by Allan Fish (Japan 1968 117m) DVD2 (Japan only, no Eng subs) Aka. Koshikei For all the Rs out there… p  Masayuki Nakajima, Takuji Yamaguchi, Nagisa Oshima  d  Nagisa Oshima  w  Tsutomo Tamura, Mamoru Sasaki, Michinori Faukao, Nagisa Oshima  ph  Yasuhiro Yoshioka  ed  Sueko Shiraishi  m  Hikaru Hiyashi  art  Jusho Toda Yun-Do Yun (R), Kei [...]

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35. Kwaidan

(Masaki Kobayashi, 1964) (essay by Jamie) Horror has always been a genre that leads itself to anthology films, Japan especially liking this form of Horror presentation. In the last decade alone two of note, Three… Extremes and Rampo Noir have produced beautiful results, a few days ago this countdown highlighted a section from the Spirits [...]

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‘Waiting For Superman,’ ‘Buried,’ Woody Allen and Ozu on Monday Morning Diary (September 27)

by Sam Juliano      The Wonders in the Dark horror poll has yielded some all-time classics, and this past week has featured some of the best reviews of the countdown.   Allan’s run of Japanese cinema has been eye-opening, and Joel’s latest review (on the Dardennes’ The Son) in his ‘Best of the 21st Century’ series [...]

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36. Dawn of the Dead

(George A. Romero, 1978) I posit first that this will not be the typical review, as this ultra famous Horror film seems to have been covered enough over the years that when we rolled out the final agreed on 100 this was one film that up to last night no one had stepped up to [...]

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37. The Haunting

(Robert Wise, 1963) (essay by Troy) Expectations can effect your view of a horror film as much as anything.  My first foray into The Haunting I wasn’t expecting much more than an intelligent, well-regarded ghost story, because how scary can a G-rated black and white film from 1963 truly be?  Yet this is one of [...]

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