Such a great opening scene and Thomasin Mackenzie is just excellent here (as she is throughout the film). It does three things that most movies struggle with:

1) It immediately establishes Ellie’s character. Who she is. What she values. What she wants. How she is.

2) It provides a context for her life and circumstances, allowing the viewer to avoid minutes of boring exposition. And it’s all so effortless.

3) It also sets up that Ellie is maybe a little more attuned to the invisible world — maybe a little bit presentient — because she knows before her caretaker yells her name that it is going to happen, and that the news is probably good. This establishes the context for the entire rest of the movie.

And because I’ve seen the “behind the scenes” of this bit, I also know that what you see there is all a set. That’s not a real house, and not a real place. It’s all in some massive warehouse-like studio lot. It makes the scene better, so this is not a criticism, but notice that the hallway is quite a lot wider than a normal hallway would be in a house like that, and the doors a bit shorter, the furniture a bit smaller. This is to give Thomasin (and the cameras) room to maneuver, room to dance, while making her seem larger than life in the scene. It makes Ellie the focus while still giving you the clues needed to understand her. And the newspaper dress is great.

Every moment in every film scene is chosen, and this one chose everything just right. Such a brilliant setup. This is exactly how you show without telling.

This film is how you use Rebecca Ferguson. Overall, Dr. Sleep was only ok. However, Rebecca as Rose the Hat…très magnifique. Also, “Rose the Hat” is one of the best character names ever.

As I noted about the weirdo in Les chambres rouges, it’s hard for a beautiful woman to read as creepy. Our girl Rebecca has no problem with this, though. She’s demented and ghoulish and a real scumbag.

I love this entire set of scenes; a masterclass in filmmaking. And it’s all so nasty. You feel kind of dirty after watching it. Which is, of course, the point.

But it’s all so perfect. Juliette Gariépy just nails the creepy psycho vibe (very hard to do for an exceptionally beautiful woman, by the way!) and the music intensifies the feeling of dread that is and dread to be. I also like it because the director (et al.) made sonic and blocking choices I never would’ve considered — and these made the scene so much better than my tendencies here would have. (And yes, the entire film is in 4:3 format. It’s not some YouTube upload issue.)

Apologies, this is all in French with no subtitles and I’m too tired to translate, but the visuals, music and non-speech here are what really matter anyway.

I loved Constantine and might watch it again one day (I rarely re-watch anything). It’s such a beautifully-shot film. And not surprisingly, at least part of the reason it looks so gorgeous is because it was shot on those unmatched Panavision Panaflex Platinum cameras with Panavision Primo lenses.

The video hints at it, but I think the reason the movie flopped is it does not hold your hand. It kicks you into the world and lets you sink or swim. Most sink because they want their thinking done for them. And Constantine is just not that kind of film.

Great analysis of that scene. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is such an excellent film and that scene is perfect. One of my favorites of any film made in the last decade. I missed on first watch that it is James Dean in the mural in the background when the girls are dumpster diving.

The thing about a Tarantino film (and really most films to a somewhat lesser extent) is that nothing is accidental.

One film where I disagreed with Roger Ebert pretty strongly is the bathtub drowning scene in Constantine. He disliked it (and the film) for the same reasons that I love it: the scene is horrible and beautiful. It’s nasty, and not in the sense of any gore or even anything sexual. It’s horrifying what Constantine does to Angela — both his direct actions of bringing her to the edge of death by drowning and what you find out she’s witnessing immediately after. Weisz’s acting when Angela realizes Constantine does not intend to let her up is perfect.

It’s all just so wrong. And that’s what makes it a great scene.

Ebert was not a fan of horror. And it shows in his misassessment of the scene and film.

I love this fight scene; one of the more realistic ever put to film. She’s absolutely getting trounced by a guy twice as big and strong as she is (and who is equally well-trained) until she gets some help and then gets the upper hand.

That’s from Soderbergh’s Haywire — an underrated film that is endlessly entertaining.

I think Steven Spielberg’s best movie is Munich. Just such a tense nasty little beast.

I’m not sure how to put this exactly without sounding dismissive as I think Spielberg is a great director, but Munich is his only film that feels fully adult.

That scene really speaks to how closely delusion and aspiration dwell together in the human heart. The entire film is just as good.

I wish this video weren’t true. But it is. And it’s a microcosm of all that’s wrong with contemporary filmmaking in general (not just trailers).

The 1963 Cleopatra movie itself was only ok, but the entrance scene into Rome is great. That’s not even the whole thing. It used ~10,000 extras and nearly bankrupted the studio. It’s not all that historically accurate, but it still captures something real about how those times differed from our own.

Most of these are not true, or are not true in the way expressed. Sometimes there are actual blooper takes included in films, but it’s rare. Even if there is a blooper and it turns out to be better, the director gets the actors to recreate the superior-by-accident blooper for many takes for better camera position or to really nail it.

This is mostly lies and is not the way high-budget films work. Even “improvised” lines and scenes are re-shot many times almost without exception.