Laura (Preminger,1944)|||||6
The Fantastic Mr. Fox (Anderson, 2009)|||||7
* My Man Godfrey (LaCava, 1936)|||||7.5
The House of the Devil (West, 2009)|||||6
* The 39 Steps (Hitchcock, 1935)|||||8
* The Return of the Living Dead (O'Bannon, 1985)|||||7.5
* Lifeforce (Hooper, 1985) (US Cut)|||||inferior
Bright Star (Campion, 2009)|||||6
A Serious Man (Coens, 2009)|||||7.5
* Rebecca (Hitchcock, 1940)|||||6.5
King of the Ants (Gordon, 2003)|||||7
King of the Ants is a hugely satisfying movie. It's entirely opposite to my preferred sensibility and requirements for filmmaking: you know, grace and beauty, visual eloquence, restraint, gentility... Even Re-Animator is saved by some finely-made dramatic scenes... this has all the gentility packed in it of an SNL Digital Short.
But there is something eloquent about Gordon's lowbrow filmmaking that I cannot pinpoint right now. King of the Ants is lucid, relatable, and soaked in very down-to-earth emotions. This is also due to a very amiable lead performance, and generally very acute acting jobs. It goes all the way with its premise, embracing and skipping along to its tune of a trashy portrait of humanity.
Very very Stuck. Feels, smells, emotionally impresses, morally punches in the same way. Well, Stuck is, thankfully, not as fugly. They'd make a great double bill, if too much sleaze isn't a problem.
Thirst (Park, 2009)|||||6Small Deaths (short) (Ramsay, 1996)|||||8
