Deep Focus | Movie Reviews for the Internet
"Since 1994"
Writer Alan Moore on the upcoming film adaptation of his (and Dave Gibbons’, of course) graphic novel Watchmen:
“Will the film even be coming out? There are these legal problems now, which I find wonderfully ironic. Perhaps it’s been cursed from afar, from England. And I can tell you that I will also be spitting venom all over it for months to come.”
Source: Hero Complex, September 18, 2024
AMY TAUBIN: I found a piece that someone had posted on Ain’t It Cool News about having seen a preview of [Eastern Promises].
DAVID CRONENBERG: Was it the guy who was obsessed with Viggo’s balls?
AT: I don’t know if I performed an act of repression, but I don’t remember seeing his balls.
DC: You do see them. It’s just that they go by rather quickly.
AT: Right. I meant I didn’t notice them in particular.
DC: It wasn’t like there was a close-up of them. But this guy was obsessed. He even wrote “big hairy balls.” Well, that’s one way of looking at it. They’re definitely there, as you would imagine, but it’s only if you’re looking for them that that’s what you see. Because mostly he’s shot in full figure. So when people decide to run the DVD frame by frame, they are going to see everything at one point or another. Of course, a lot of the time it’s going to be slightly blurred because he’s in motion.
Excerpted from “Foreign Affairs”, Film Comment, September/October 2007
Point is, giant robots turn into cars! (More specifically and profitably, they turn into Pontiacs and Hummers and GMC pickup trucks.) And jets! And helicopters! And boom boxes! And cell phones! And then they fight each other! All sarcasm aside, that’s pretty much awesome. On some very basic level, I don’t think you can fuck up the kick of a movie about metamorphic robots-no, not even you, Mr. Bay. Let us acknowledge that Transformers is not simply a story of humanity being attacked by a sophisticated breed of technological nihilism-it is that assault.
Excerpted from “Auto-Chaotic” by Nathan Lee, The Village Voice, July 3, 2024
Because of a transmission error, a film review yesterday about “Live Free or Die Hard” misstated the critic’s description of the plot. It should have been described as “logic-defying,” not “logic-defined.”
Excerpted from “Corrections: For the Record”, The New York Times, June 28, 2024
ELVIS MITCHELL: I Think I Love My Wife is very political. It’s a movie about the black middle class.
CHRIS ROCK: There’s an isolation that the black middle class goes through. I remember watching Lost in Translation and going, “That’s how I feel in America.” Nothing captures the black experience more than Lost in Translation. It’s one of the blackest movies I’ve ever seen, flat out.
Excerpted from “Chris Rock,” by Elvis Mitchell, Interview, April, 2007
DAVID FINCHER, responding to Jake Gyllenhaal’s complaints about shooting up to 90 takes per scene for Zodiac:
I hate earnestness in performance. Usually by Take 17 the earnestness is gone.
Excerpted from “Lights, Bogeyman, Action” by David M. Halbfinger, The New York Times, February 18, 2024
To make the follow-up to Silence of the Lambs would be very daunting. To follow Red Dragon — less daunting.
Excerpted from “Hannibal Lecter Saved My Life” by David Michael, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 9. 2007
Director Alex Cox, writing on “extreme cinema” in The Guardian:
Perhaps the New Cinema Fund genuinely believed a more brutal, visible rape would add to the artistic quality of Revengers: the film was based on a pretty extreme and demented play, and it needed a certain shocking aspect. Equally possibly, the Film Council may have reckoned a more explicit rape might get us into Cannes, or pick up a few more foreign sales. In other words, this was a pragmatic rape, a money thing.