Dark Star Demonstrates Creativity In Low-Budget Confines

I'll freely admit that I went into Dark Star with low expectations. Chalk that up to the fact that its own creative team hasn't spoke fondly on the project since its 1974 debut. Screenwriter Dan O'Bannon even went as far as to label it "the world's least impressive professional film". With that informing my pre-viewing perception of Dark Star, is it any wonder I was going into my viewing on the dubious side of things? In a happy turn of events, though, it turns out that Dark Star is actually pretty good! John Carpenter's directorial debut has its rough patches, no question. Yet, it impresses in its dark humor and crafty filmmaking as well as in how it indicates certain elements that would be prevalent in Carpenter's filmography going forward.

Kurt Russell Solidifies His Action Movie Bona Fidas with Escape from New York

You gotta love it when movie poster taglines so succinctly sum up the premise of the film they're advertising. "Breaking out is impossible. Breaking in is insane." Yes, that'll do nicely for accurately summing up the stakes of John Carpenter's Escape from New York. This feature takes place in the then-far off time of 1997. All of America's most dangerous criminals have been contained in one expansive prison: New York City. Yes, the Big Apple is now rotten to the core as it's been converted into a place for criminals. You know who just landed in NYC? The President of the United States (Donald Pleasence). Air Force One crashed into New York and now the President has been taken hostage by somebody in NYC.

Halloween Is Both A Derivative Slasher Movie And A Fascinating Psychological Drama

Call Michael Myers the Backstreet Boys, because he's back (ALRIGHT!). Yes, the slasher movie icon who served as the centerpiece of one of the numerous revolutionary horror films back in the 1970's is back in Halloween after nearly a decade of absence from movie theater screens. All the other sequels and the two Rob Zombie reboots have been disregarded to create a David Gordon Green directed follow-up solely to the original John Carpenter directed movie, one that picks up forty years after that fateful night that he came home that left Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) permanently psychologically scarred to the point that she now resides in an isolated house that's fortified to the brim to keep anyone, especially Michael Myers, out.

Sorry To Bother You But Sorry to Bother You Is Excellent

It's always a treat to watch a movie that feels so much like it's own one-of-a-kind creation, a movie that wears its own unique personality as proudly as one might do showing off an Olympic gold medal. Sorry To Bother You is one such movie, with Boots Riley, previously known for his vocal work in bands like The Coup, making his debut as a director here on this satirical dark comedy to remarkable results. Riley's exceptional work as a writer and a director here echoes numerous past great satirists, most notably cinematic satirists like John Carpenter and Paul Verhoeven, in how he uses the most absurd off-the-wall storytelling details to prop up thoughtful explorations of weighty social issues.

In Laman's Terms: Five Classic Directors Who Deserve A Major Comeback

In Laman's Terms is a new weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

While a number of directors from the big American cinema revolution of the 1970's (like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen) are still doing regular work in Hollywood, it must be said that quite of the few masters from this era as well as other prolific directors from other epochs of Hollywood have found shockingly little work in the modern day cinematic landscape given how many classics they've delivered in their career. As just a little fun exercise, I've compiled five notable directors, some of whom come from the aforementioned creative boom of the 70's, others who come from other eras of Hollywood, who don't get much in the way of work anymore but totally deserve more high-profile gigs, perhaps from the likes of studios like Netflix, Annapurna or Amazon who are now in the business of financing costly auteur-driven projects that major studios are hesitant to greenlight.

Kurt Russell And A Go-For-Broke Attitude Shine In Big Trouble In Little China

To look at the career of director John Carpenter in an in-depth manner is to realize that this guy was nothing if not tonally versatile in the work he produced. The creepy horror film Halloween launched his vocation as a filmmaker into the stratosphere, while the 1982 effort The Thing returned Carpenter to the horror genre with plenty of newfound science-fiction elements to keep things fresh. John Carpenter's 1986 feature Big Trouble In Little China is a bold departure of either of those previously mentioned movies in a myriad of ways, not only in the way it constantly uses Eastern and Chinese imagery but also in its more zany light-hearted atmosphere.

Halloween Is A Terrifying Movie About What Happens When Fear Intrudes On Normalcy

Even if no other high-quality horror films had been released that decade, it's quite likely that the 1970's would have cultivated a persona as a landmark decade for horror cinema solely thanks to the presence of the massive success of the micro-budget horror film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But that phenomenal horror feature would not be the only low-budget entry in that genre to soar in this era, as four years after Leatherface sliced up a bunch of teenagers Michael Myers would enter the world of horror cinema via Halloween and, much like Leatherface before him, change the landscape of horror movies forever.

They Live Review (Classic Write-Up)

They Live seems like a B-side, if you will, to fellow 1980's sci-fi/action satire RoboCop. Both weave in heavy duty science-fiction elements (robots in RoboCop, aliens in They Live) while diving in head first into satirizing the massive amount of influence big businesses carried then (and, in many cases, still do). They Live doesn't find nearly as much success as an individual movie as RoboCop, but it's still a gonzo trip into an appropriately unsubtle caricature of our world.

The Thing Review (Classic Write-Up)

Boy, 1982 sure was a helluva year for sci-fi movies, huh? And such a variety of sci-fi storytelling too! From the family-friendly emotionally involving tale of E.T. to Ridley Scott bringing Blade Runner to life to Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Kahn to Tron, there was seemingly no end to notable sci-fi titles that year. One other uber important sci-fi feature to arrive that year (released the same weekend as Blade Runner, in fact) was the John Carpenter motion picture The Thing.