by Tony Dayoub
Last night's electrifying fuck-it-all performance by Ricky Gervais as host of the Golden Globes has prompted me to start closing the door on the cinema of 2010. This past year, I was fortunate enough to see most movies relatively early (still yet to see: Blue Valentine, Enter the Void, Four Lions, The Illusionist, Mother, A Prophet, Restrepo, Sweetgrass, Tiny Furniture). Last week, online mag Wide Screen published my top 23 films of the year; an odd number, yes, but this was a good year for movies. I encourage readers to check the article out, where my fellow writers (including editor Glenn Kenny, The New York Press' Simon Abrams, MTV's Kurt Loder, Self-Styled Siren Farran Smith Nehme, The Village Voice's Vadim Rizov, and feature writer Karl Rozemeyer) and I discuss the recurring myth that the past year was a bad one for cinema (as well as peer into what 2011 looks like from here).
After the jump, you'll find a preview of my list highlighting the top 10 entries. When possible, I link to my past reviews of each film. More thoughts on each movie can be found in the newest issue of Wide Screen.
Showing posts with label How to Train Your Dragon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label How to Train Your Dragon. Show all posts
Monday, January 17, 2011
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Movie Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) and Three Better Ways to Spend Your Money at the Movies
by Tony Dayoub
No big surprise. A Nightmare on Elm Street, the unnecessary remake of Wes Craven's 1984 hallucinatory slasher film opening tomorrow has nothing new to offer. You know this film is headed in the wrong direction literally from the start, with a misguided opening credit design that looks like it started as near-illegible chalk scrawls on a sidewalk, but ends up visually echoed by redundant white on black credits as a corrective. And the film goes downhill from there. My frequent criticism of remakes is, why revisit a decent film if it won't be improved? In Samuel Bayer's reboot, the overt sexual paranoia of the original's promiscuous kids is neutered into a hollow exploration of pedophilia simply to give the illusion of topicality.
No big surprise. A Nightmare on Elm Street, the unnecessary remake of Wes Craven's 1984 hallucinatory slasher film opening tomorrow has nothing new to offer. You know this film is headed in the wrong direction literally from the start, with a misguided opening credit design that looks like it started as near-illegible chalk scrawls on a sidewalk, but ends up visually echoed by redundant white on black credits as a corrective. And the film goes downhill from there. My frequent criticism of remakes is, why revisit a decent film if it won't be improved? In Samuel Bayer's reboot, the overt sexual paranoia of the original's promiscuous kids is neutered into a hollow exploration of pedophilia simply to give the illusion of topicality.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)

