“Written as a melodrama, shot as a musical by the director, and won the science fiction award of the year.” This is the confounding summary of The Wicker Man, the British cult classic that has inspired multiple generations of horror and mystery filmmakers and took the ‘outsider-enters-a-small-town-with-strange-goings-on’ to horrifying extremes in ways that reminded us “shocks are so much better absorbed with the knees bent.”
A Mark Kermode-hosted, behind-the-scenes documentary from 2001 has now surfaced that dives into the making of the beloved cult classic, with eerie footage of locations and a multitude of retrospective interviews from cast and crew, and pre-production photos and videos, including iconic imagery of the wicker man himself.
Titled Burnt Offering: The Cult of the Wicker Man, the special gives insight into how some of The Wicker Man’s chilling choices were made, including scraping the idea for a face on the titular, massive figure...
A Mark Kermode-hosted, behind-the-scenes documentary from 2001 has now surfaced that dives into the making of the beloved cult classic, with eerie footage of locations and a multitude of retrospective interviews from cast and crew, and pre-production photos and videos, including iconic imagery of the wicker man himself.
Titled Burnt Offering: The Cult of the Wicker Man, the special gives insight into how some of The Wicker Man’s chilling choices were made, including scraping the idea for a face on the titular, massive figure...
- 7/7/2016
- by Mike Mazzanti
- The Film Stage
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol; The Wicker Tree; The Iron Lady
After blotting his copybook with the drearily disappointing Knight and Day, Tom Cruise regains his multiplex action mojo with the surprisingly sprightly Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011, Paramount, 12). Thrown into the wilderness by an absurdly contrived chain of conspiratorial events culminating in the near-destruction of the Kremlin, the now-rogue Ethan Hunt ventures to Dubai, Mumbai and various other scenic locales where he and his crack team of elite outcasts must reclaim their mission status against predictably impossible odds.
Having clearly workshopped the audience responses from previous films, the writers (Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec are credited) contrive to bring comic sidekick Simon Pegg to the fore in the manner of Joe Pesci in the Lethal Weapon sequels, while simultaneously breaking up the all-boys club with ass-kicking heroine Paula Patton.
If it all sounds terribly cynical on paper, the on-screen results are far more likably playful,...
After blotting his copybook with the drearily disappointing Knight and Day, Tom Cruise regains his multiplex action mojo with the surprisingly sprightly Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011, Paramount, 12). Thrown into the wilderness by an absurdly contrived chain of conspiratorial events culminating in the near-destruction of the Kremlin, the now-rogue Ethan Hunt ventures to Dubai, Mumbai and various other scenic locales where he and his crack team of elite outcasts must reclaim their mission status against predictably impossible odds.
Having clearly workshopped the audience responses from previous films, the writers (Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec are credited) contrive to bring comic sidekick Simon Pegg to the fore in the manner of Joe Pesci in the Lethal Weapon sequels, while simultaneously breaking up the all-boys club with ass-kicking heroine Paula Patton.
If it all sounds terribly cynical on paper, the on-screen results are far more likably playful,...
- 4/28/2012
- by Mark Kermode
- The Guardian - Film News
Roman Polanski’s second feature film, Repulsion (1965), is considered a classic of the slow-burn, first-person psychological-study genre. Just out on a special-edition DVD and Blu-ray from Criterion, it messily observes and records the unraveling of the sanity of an unbalanced young woman (played by an especially delicate Catherine Deneuve) when she’s left home alone for the weekend by her older sister.
That’s really it for plot, folks; this is more of a non-narrative character study than a densely plotted thriller. But if you hook up with the film’s wavelength, settle in with it and allow the flow of images to lead you along, you’ll find yourself taking an interesting and disturbing journey.
The movie is expertly photographed by Gil Taylor (who would reunite with Polanski a year later on Cul-de-sac), who imbues the first half of the movie with a rather natural look. But once the long,...
That’s really it for plot, folks; this is more of a non-narrative character study than a densely plotted thriller. But if you hook up with the film’s wavelength, settle in with it and allow the flow of images to lead you along, you’ll find yourself taking an interesting and disturbing journey.
The movie is expertly photographed by Gil Taylor (who would reunite with Polanski a year later on Cul-de-sac), who imbues the first half of the movie with a rather natural look. But once the long,...
- 7/29/2009
- by no-reply@fangoria.com (Scooter McCrae)
- Fangoria
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