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2000 Eyes, by Richard T. Jameson, Film Reviews

2000 Eyes: U-571

Written by Richard T. Jameson October 14, 2020October 13, 2020 Leave a Comment

[Written for Mr. Showbiz]

Jonathan Mostow made his feature-directing debut a couple of seasons ago with Breakdown, a tense road-movie-cum-chase-thriller that pitted motorist and husband Kurt Russell against a sinister good-old-boy trucker (the late J.T. Walsh) who had somehow kidnapped Russell’s wife in broad daylight and the wide open spaces of the desert Southwest. The picture became a sleeper hit, and industry and fans alike marked Mostow as somebody to watch. U-571 won’t undo his career — it bids to be another palm-sweater, and technically delivers often enough to keep the popcorn crowd in their seats. But this movie seems to have no reason for existing except as an answer to the rhetorical question: “Do you think somebody nowadays could make an old-fashioned, straight-ahead submarine flick like the ones they did during World War II?” Mostow must have said, “Why not?” whereas many would have ended their riposte one word sooner.

Review: Meet Joe Black

Written by Robert Horton October 22, 2018

[Originally written for Film.com in 1998]

Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years.

Martin Brest is one of Hollywood’s choosier directors, a man whose output in the last ten years consists of 1988’s deft comedy Midnight Run and 1992’s slice of inspirational hokum Scent of a Woman. The aroma of the latter film—deep-dish philosophy served up with a generous helping of fried baloney—returns in Brest’s Meet Joe Black, a sideways remake of the oddball fantasy Death Takes a Holiday. That property, filmed in 1934 and (as a TV-movie) in 1971, had the figure of Death coming down to earth to observe how people live. During his vacation, Death claims no victims anywhere in the world, a plot point this new film has jettisoned.

Blu-ray: The Larry Fessenden Collection

Written by Sean Axmaker October 31, 2015

Larry Fessenden isn’t the most well-known of indie-horror filmmakers but he should be. As a writer / director, he’s taken the classic horror genres and turned them inside out, and he’s produced or co-produced dozens of films, including Kelly Reichert’s Wendy and Lucy and Night Moves, Ti West’s The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers, and Jim Mickle’s Stake Land, through Glass Eye Pix, his own production shingle. He’s been a cheerleader, in his own words, for other independent filmmakers with a passion for horror, and his encouragement has made the genre much richer in the past couple of decades.

Scream Factory, the horror imprint of the Shout! Factory label, collects Fessenden’s first four directorial features and releases them on Blu-ray for the first time in The Larry Fessenden Collection (Scream Factory, Blu-ray). All four films are all newly mastered in HD transfers approved by the director and presented in separate discs with new and archival supplements.

No Telling (1991), Fessenden’s first feature as a director, takes on Frankenstein through the story of a research scientist who starts poaching animals from the nearby forest to experiment on while ostensibly on a summer vacation with his wife. Meanwhile a proponent of organic farming tries to get the local farmers to give up pesticides for the good of the land. It’s eco-horror in the modern age. The disc includes new commentary by Fessenden, a featurette, the short film White Trash (1997), and deleted scenes.