Director Ranald MacDougall’s 1959 classic thriller is a film that presents a much more shocking and jarring vision of the end of the world than most contemporary apocalyptic horror films and dramas. And that’s mainly because if you’ve never seen this you’d never know that most of the elements from this were stolen by most horror films. Including Will Smith’s version of “I Am Legend,” and even “Night of the Living Dead” to some extent. The last man on Earth is an African American man forced to travel by his wits alone. He is forced to deal with cabin fever and loneliness, tries to contact other human life by radio waiting for signals everyday, and yes, he even props up mannequins around the city to engage in conversations with which not only indicate his sense of isolation but his fading sanity.
Tag Archives: Drama
The Box (2009)
What director Richard Kelly has done is basically taken Richard Matheson’s short story that worked well in the confines of a thirty minute anthology series like “Twilight Zone” and basically stretched it in to nearly two hours. “The Box” by all accounts should have been an instant win, but it’s a short story stretched in to a grueling two hour period. Kelly continues his fall from grace (Southland Tales, I’m looking at you) creatively by helming a miscast and pretty terribly written loose adaptation of Matheson’s original story that features James Marsden and Cameron Diaz as a Virginia married couple facing dead end jobs and unemployment. Conveniently they receive a package one morning housing a box with a red button that presents to them a most tempting offer.
The Blind Side (2009)
Admittedly I’m an old cynical bastard in a young man’s body, so nine times out of ten inspirational sports films don’t connect with me at all. “The Blind Side” took everyone by surprise and I don’t think anyone expected it to hit as big as it did. But sure enough it did and I’m more surprised than anyone that I quite enjoyed myself most of the time because normally I’d find a reason to bash this film as being melodramatic. Sure it is melodramatic but oddly enough most of the events that occur here actually happened. Someone actually did take a poor African American child from the ghetto and turn them in to a fine upstanding citizen with a plethora of opportunities and it’s because of the Tuohy’s that Michael Oher was able to pursue his dreams and break free from the prison that is poverty and crime. John Lee Hancock directs quite a visually soft film that doesn’t play too heavy on the sap.
Blessed (2004)
I’ve seen many “Rosemary’s Baby” wannabes since I was a kid, many of them hit the mark, many of them missed the mark, but all aspired to reach the greatness Roman Polanski did in his film about Satanic cults and the woman who becomes prey for their horrific goals at resurrecting satan. “Blessed” seeks to take that concept and run with it and wouldn’t you know it? It misses the mark. It misses it by thousands of miles. “Blessed” is such a confused and unfocused piece of tripe that I feel nothing but sadness for the likes of Heather Graham and James Purefoy who just shamble around looking for a direction and can never seem to find any.
Alive (1993)
I didn’t lead a fairly sheltered life growing up. When you are raised the way I was, you tend to see many disturbing things, And yet first watching “Alive” was a very interesting experience because it shook me down to the core. Watching people eat their loved ones and best friends is harrowing enough but having to ask myself how far I’d go to survive in the middle of nowhere is something else entirely. We’ve all heard of the Donner party, and we relive that same experience with the Uruguayan Rugby team who found themselves at death’s door after a horrible plane crash left them stranded in the snow covered Andes where help was literally hundreds of miles away. Losing their lives, and their sanity the group had to rely on their faith and their strength to make it through day by day being forced to live on rations and inevitably each other.
The House of the Devil (2009)
This movie is a big step up for director Ti West whose debut film was like an immature fan boy’s homage to everything schlocky, while his sophomore film was nothing more than a terrible sequel to a rather terrible film. West matures considerably with what is basically a slow boil homage to the seventies that is obviously inspired by the classic “Rosemary’s Baby.” Everything from the marketing campaign to the posters works under the pretense that this is a time capsule of the seventies, an unexplored gem from that decade that many haven’t quite explored yet.
Triangle (2009)
My experience with Christopher Smith has been mixed over the years. I thought “Creep” was a good concept but pretty painful to sit through while “Severance” was an underrated horror comedy that suffered from comparisons to “Shaun of the Dead.” Surely though, Smith is a man whose genre outputs have been quite varied and he seems to be coming in to his own by directing films that benefit the horror genre rather than exploit it. Take “Triangle” a movie that by all accounts should have been given a theatrical release in the states. Sadly it’s basically just a direct-to-DVD release that will get lost in the shuffle. Which is a shame because while “Triangle” is a pretty atmospheric horror film, it’s so much more than that.