Blazing Saddles Is A Hoot Because of Its Attention to Western Details

It's often been repeated that you couldn't make Blazing Saddles today because of people being "too PC". To me, that registers as a bunch of hooey. Plenty of provocative comedy gets made. Sorry to Bother You? It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia? Slut in a Good Way? Now, I'd agree Blazing Saddles couldn't get made today but not because of old white dude conspiracy theories regarding "kids are too sensitive these a day". Blazing Saddles was a response to the then-omnipresent Westner genre that had only started to fade from American cinemas at the start of the 1970s. It's skewering of Westerns was a byproduct of its time. To remove it from 1974 is to remove important historical context informing its comedy.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul Is An Impressively Powerful Portrait Of A Romance Attacked By Prejudice

And so my complete unfamiliarity with the works of iconic West German writer/director Rainer Werner Fassbinder ended this past week with my first-time viewing of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, a feature film that became the de facto answer whenever I inquired to my friends about which of Fassbinder's movies I should watch first. Having now watched it, it's no surprise this was seen by so many in such high regard to the point that it was widely felt that this absolutely had to be my entry point into Fassbinder's work as a filmmaker! Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is an excellent romantic drama that provides a captivating humanizing portrait of two romantically entangled outsiders in West Germany.

Few Sequels Are As Amazing As The Captivating The Godfather: Part II

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #38
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #31 (Tied witb Taxi Driver)   

For years, I've heard the usual picks of when people say best sequels; The Empire Strikes Back, Spider-Man 2, and of course, The Godfather: Part II. That 1974 Francis Ford Coppola has been held up as the paragon of sequel filmmaking for decades now and getting to actually watch it for the first time totally made me realize why The Godfather: Part II is held up in such high stature in discussions of cinema. This thing not only manages to surpass the quality of its already incredible predecessor but it also does a remarkable job of enhancing the world established by the first movie by lending a sweeping mythic quality to the Corleone crime syndicate.

The Disturbing Nadir Of Humanity Is Seen In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Right off the bat, Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre plainly informs its audience that this is not going to be a movie for the faint of heart. A narrator reads off a title crawl in a manner that avoids going too over-the-top while still retaining an air of menace. After this we get our first visual in the feature, the sight of dug up corpses sprawled out on top of some sort of fixture in a commentary. No jump scares or anything like that occur here, it's simply the camera panning out on this shot of this atrocity. The full horrifying nature of this visual is allowed to sink into the viewer and helps set the tone of what's to come in this motion picture.

Young Frankenstein Review (Classic Write-Up)

I, Frankenstein

With the recent release of the likes of The Starving Games and SuperFast, the art of the spoof movie has considerably deteriorated in the modern age, a far cry from the 70's and 80's when films like Airplane! garnered immensely positive critical and audience reception as well as financial success. Young Frankenstein, a feature from an obscure filmmaker named Mel Brooks, was made in that specific age when spoof features were held in higher regard, and while it's far from perfect, it is at least amusing enough to understand why its earned the reputation it has.