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an especially dangerous dug called Brendan Profile picture
an especially dangerous dug called Brendan
@metaplexmovies
staff @NextBestPicture, further bylines @BWDR @Ebertvoices @inversedotcom @Polygon @Vaguevisages, guest @BBC. prone to ramble about aspect ratios at parties.
Jun 25 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
now that FURIOSA is out on VOD I wanted to clarify what I meant by "mini-oners," IE Spielbergian shots that effortlessly combine multiple setups but aren't full-bore tracking shots, by sharing some of the best in the movie, starting with this one:
FURIOSA (shockingly) begins with a series of longer-takes, with Miller instantly differentiating the visual language and rhythm from the cut-cut-cut kineticism of FURY ROAD. This shot begins as a close-up before craning to an epic tableau, the visual climax of the opening scene:
Mar 13 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
is it safe to say that I thought DUNE: PART TWO was exhilarating and rousing cinema but sometimes at the cost of over-simplifying the moral complexity of the book, and at its worst felt like a didactic caricature of radicalized belief rather than a moving deconstruction of it There's a lot in DUNE: PART TWO I love, but I struggled with how cleanly Villeneuve points the moral compass of the storytelling: anyone "pro Messiah" is unfeelingly evil (Lady Jessica) or comically blind (Stilgar) and anyone "anti Messiah" is noble and sympathetic (Chani).
Aug 8, 2023 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Revisited SORCERER and again just eviscerated by it. Freidkin turns the jungle into a malignant presence, causality and fate manifest as pure elemental terror. Some of the wildest, most incomprehensibly captured footage in the history of movies. For me, Freidkin's greatest film.


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Image SORCERER is as much a horror movie as THE EXORCIST. Friedkin's hyper-vivid, totally tactile sense of cinematic style makes his nightmares feel real, every location oozing expressionist threat, danger and malice. Sections of it are among the most physically intense I've ever seen.


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Jun 19, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Something weird is happening with box office tracking. Others have pointed it out, but ~all~ live-action superhero movies are underperforming tracking, while most non-superhero movies are making more. Something is broken. I made a list of most major releases so far this year: Image Tracking always has a certain margin of error. It's rarely perfect. But two things strike me as especially unusual: the discrepancy of what movies over or under perform (IE, live-action superhero movies), and when movies fall outside that standard deviation, it's WAY off.
Jun 18, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
With THE FLASH, ELEMENTAL and TRANSFORMERS underperforming, the hardest lesson for studios is if an audience isn't given a strong reason to see something, they simply will not go. "Let's just go to the movies" does not exist. We need movies that demand the big screen experience. There's a reason ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE is crushing it: it's a true audio-visual spectacle that rewards the biggest screens. Movies need to justify the big screen experience more than ever, and I hope Hollywood takes the right lessons to approve visually bold programming.
Jun 18, 2023 • 15 tweets • 7 min read
I’m home taking care of a sick girlfriend, come at me twitter

ngl.link/metaplex815 Mostly! Luckily it isn’t Covid, tested negative and no fever. Just a nasty cold. Lots of soup, Gatorade, etc. Hopefully she recovers in a few days. Image
Jun 17, 2023 • 4 tweets • 4 min read
This is obvious to say, but the color and stylization of design, movement and creativity that's only possible in animation nearly never translates to live action, and in the process mostly reaffirms the beauty and possibility of animation as a medium. I wish they'd just stop. ImageImageImageImage It speaks to how incredible the animation was in ATLA that Joaquim Dos Santos––who directed half the finale, and a bunch otherwise––just co-directed ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE. This show's look and rhythm is so animation-specific, live-action will always struggle to do it justice. Image
Jun 17, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
There's some truth to this, but we’re also living in an age of the most softball, amenable criticism maybe in the history of writing about movies. If you think there’s a “binary” or “no nuance,” please seek out more criticism. Review scores keep on trending up, not down. I keep seeing talk critics "like superhero movies less" or critics have more and more of a love / hate relationship with movies––there's no data to support this. Even THE FLASH has a mixed-positive 67%. That is the definition of a "tepid" response.

globalnews.ca/news/7947449/m…
Jun 16, 2023 • 6 tweets • 6 min read
I love what INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY wants to be: a rousing, elegiac reflection of an aging pulp hero, and a surprising caution to nostalgia. But man, Mangold's direction is the dullest, ugliest, least kinetic in series history. It's just a huge missed opportunity. ImageImageImageImage The saving grace of THE DIAL OF DESTINY is how committed Ford is to playing Indiana Jones one last time; he brings a lithe physicality to Indy that grounds the movie in something real and even affecting as it juggles ill-conceived action scenes and plot noise. I loved him in this ImageImageImageImage
Jun 10, 2023 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Rewatched RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and still in awe by how fucking fast this thing is. Spielberg directs every scene like a set piece, giving dialogue and exposition nearly as much visual energy as chases and getaways. The pace is almost hypnotic, unlike any movie before or since. ImageImageImageImage My favorite example of Spielberg turning exposition into magic is Brody telling Indy he can chase the Ark; in a 97 second oner, he evolves the staging with a clear beginning, middle, end, with shifting visual cues to highlight intrigue, drama, and finally, danger. It's perfect.
Jun 9, 2023 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
I loved THE NAKED SPUR, Anthony Mann's noir-western where every bounty hunter, prospector or army man is wretched and greedy, while the dazzling technicolor photography creates the mood of a dangerous fever dream. It’s one of the best—and most beautiful—westerns I’ve ever seen. ImageImageImageImage Every frame of THE NAKED SPUR is a masterpiece of staging and pictorial appeal. It's among the first movies with the trope "a talkative prisoner gets into the heads of his captors," and Mann brilliantly reinforces the shifting power dynamics through blocking and movement. ImageImageImageImage
Jun 9, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
hearing tech people talk about pointlessly mimicking creative visual and editorial choices (many planned in advance) with the exact same soulless dry corporate tone of voice they would about "finding new profit sectors" or a corporate merger is genuinely depressing A.I. will never understand the thematic or rhythmic intent behind why a match cut was designed into the shooting schedule in the first place, or even "found" in the edit, and because of that, A.I. "editing" will always feel hollow and superficial. It's a boat without a captain.
Feb 14, 2023 • 5 tweets • 4 min read
a fun thing about all this Hays Code anti-sex talk is that noir got around the guidelines by making the "unseen" lurid subtext as arousing and suggestive as possible. everybody wanted to fuck everybody and probably did and looked at eachother like this. the idea sex was "not in movies" during the hays code period is total fallacy. THE APARTMENT, which released in 1960, is literally about a guy (hilariously) renting out his flat to his boss so he can fuck. soon, everybody wants to use it to fuck. it is a plot about fucking.
Jan 20, 2023 • 5 tweets • 5 min read
it's wild how Daisy Ridley showed up with a powerhouse performance in THE FORCE AWAKENS, a sensitive and nuanced turn in THE LAST JEDI and then gave a great performance THE RISE OF SKYWALKER despite it being shit, and Hollywood has not given her one great thing to do since THE FORCE AWKENS was one of the most performance driven Star Wars movies to date. So many crucial moments––Rey's loneliness, her joy, her fear, her power in the forest––are powered by Ridley's astonishing performance. I thought I was watching one of the next huge stars.
Jan 5, 2023 • 5 tweets • 5 min read
Guillermo del Toro recently summarized the problem of blockbusters relying on previz as "we get motion but not emotion, we don't get scope, we get effects," and that really speaks to how weightless, flat and low-stakes most action has come to feel this decade ImageImageImageImage And to be clear, there's nothing wrong with Previz. It can be a vital tool. The issue is studios increasingly developing previz before director's even sign on, making it difficult to organically develop story or character alongside big moments of action. Image
Oct 4, 2022 • 9 tweets • 7 min read
Finally saw AVATAR in IMAX 3D (amazing) and it was a depressing reminder blockbuster filmmaking has been in a weird period of stasis for 13 years. CGI has barely matured, true spectacle is rare and Epic Action done well is even rarer. THE WAY OF WATER can't come fast enough. Cameron's a master at spatial geography, set-up & pay-off, visual storytelling, etc, but I was especially struck how he handles pacing, rhythm, cinematic structure. AVATAR has a musical sense of when to hit a crescendo, and like much in pop storytelling, that's a now a lost art.
Oct 3, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
HOUSE OF THE DRAGON continuing the classic Thrones tradition of making an episode so dark it's almost unwatchable ImageImageImageImage Miguel Sapochnik is a very good director but tonight's episode of HOUSE OF THE DRAGON has some of the worst day for night photography I have literally ever seen Image
Aug 5, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I almost watched PREY half asleep last night and it was spooky how easy it was to treat a movie I’m excited for as disposable entertainment and not an actual work of art. Streaming changes how passively we engage even when we don’t realize it, and we don’t talk about that enough. I’ve been thinking about Tarantino on how movie magic has a lot to do with the effort to buy a ticket, travel, sit down instead of plopping on your couch, and streaming is conditioning viewers by inadvertently trivializing the whole thing and that sucks

Aug 5, 2022 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
re-watching PREDATOR and remembering when action movies were this casually beautiful ImageImageImageImage the invisibility cloak is a perfect example of an effect that looks unrealistic and even dated but in practice completely sells the surreal terror and unreality of the predator itself Image
Jul 14, 2022 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
CGI and visual effects are a vital, beautiful and often invisible part of the filmmaking process, and every time you see “bad CG” remember it’s the fault of the studio and filmmaker’s planning and budget and rarely the work of the artists themselves. This is probably obvious but the reason the visual effects look amazing in GRAVITY and INTERSTELLAR and often iffy in the MCU is mostly because the VFX “cook” for a really long time and build that into the budget, whereas marvel does everything last minute. Patience and care.
Jul 14, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
sex is great but have you ever been falsely accused of murder and slowly come to a silent understanding with the U.S. Marshall chasing you Somehow forgot how next-level great THE FUGITIVE is. I love how it’s as much (or more) about how a “regular guy” would successfully evade police as it is about the mystery of who killed Kimble wife. Huge stretches are just quietly watching Kimble figure shit out and it rules.