Horror | Culture Snob

Dissociative Disorder: Movies with Multiple Personalities

September 13, 2021June 21, 2006 by Culture Snob

Steve Martin and Claire Danes Two movies live in Shopgirl. One is a creepy but strangely touching May-December romance between Claire Danes and Steve Martin. The other stars Danes and Jason Schwartzman in a screwball comedy, with an intrusive, superfluous voice-over. The first of these movies is surprisingly good; the second sucks. Plus: Silent Hill, another schizophrenic film.

Tagged: Anand Tucker, Christophe Gans, Comedies, Dramas, Horror, Reviews, Shopgirl, Silent Hill, Steve Martin

Movies

Reasons to Hike Wolf Creek

September 13, 2021May 31, 2006 by Culture Snob

I know Wolf Creek doesn’t seem like an appropriate destination for cultured – and sensible! – people such as you and me, but allow me to make a case for visiting this remote area of the Australian Outback in your cinematic travels.

Tagged: Greg McLean, Horror, Reviews, Torture, Wolf Creek

Movies

On the Uses of Horror

September 13, 2021April 13, 2006 by Culture Snob

At The House Next Door, Matt Zoller Seitz hosts a discussion on whether the new wave of grisly horror movies means something culturally, and what these films are saying.

Tagged: Horror, Ways of Watching

Movies

Feeling Yourself Disintegrate

September 13, 2021January 11, 2006 by Culture Snob

In Dark Water, the 2002 Japanese horror movie that was re-made in the United States in 2005, an anxious, annoying, newly single mother named Yoshimi rents a very wet apartment and encounters a greenish ghost. I thought: Certainly this would have been a much more entertaining film if Yoshimi battled the pink robots instead.

Tagged: Dark Water, Horror, Making a Mockery, Reviews

Movies

The King(dom) of Comedy

September 13, 2021December 15, 2005 by Culture Snob

The ever-divisive Lars von Trier is not known as a storyteller, and that’s the main reason his miniseries The Kingdom – which was released on DVD in November – is so surprising.

Tagged: Foreign-Language Films, Horror, Lars von Trier, Reviews, Riget, Television, The Kingdom

Best of Culture Snob Movies

The Evil That Men Do

October 19, 2021November 21, 2005 by Culture Snob

As an agnostic, the conclusion of Paul Schraeder’s Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist was deeply unsatisfying. Evil is unleashed on an eastern African town, and it is expelled by the power of … God? You might reasonably ask: What the hell did you expect, asshole? It’s a fair question, but it’s not quite that simple.

Tagged: Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist, Evil, Exorcist: The Beginning, God, Horror, Paul Schraeder, Possession, Renny Harlin, Reviews, The Exorcist, William Friedkin

Best of Culture Snob Movies

A Circle of Loss

September 13, 2021October 27, 2005 by Culture Snob

Spider Forest is at once lovely and brutal, delicate and hard, sympathetic and unforgiving. It has a feel both foreign and familiar, like the image in the movie of a girl whose body rises into the air feet-first, as if God’s hand gently plucked her by the ankle and took her into the heavens.

Tagged: Dramas, Foreign-Language Films, Horror, Reviews, Song Il-gon, Spider Forest

1 Comment

Movies

Ghost in the Shell

September 13, 2021October 4, 2005 by Culture Snob

I shan’t belabor the point – apples and oranges and all that stuff – but how in the hell do The Jacket and The Grudge score roughly the same with critics?

Tagged: Horror, John Maybury, Reviews, Takashi Shimizu, The Grudge, The Jacket, Thrillers

Movies

At the Drive-in

September 13, 2021September 27, 2005 by Culture Snob

Neither Red Eye nor The Skeleton Key would survive my typical level of indoor scrutiny, but neither sucked, which made the pairing perfect for a Saturday night outdoors with pizza and beer.

Tagged: Horror, Iain Softley, Red Eye, Reviews, The Skeleton Key, Ways of Watching, Wes Craven

Movies

Eat the Rich

September 13, 2021August 24, 2005 by Culture Snob

Is it any wonder the dead are fed up and primed for revolt? Is it any surprise that writer/director George A. Romero is cheering them on in Land of the Dead? And is it so hard to see these zombies as a blunt allegory for racial minorities, the impoverished, the politically disenfranchised? On the final question, apparently so.

Tagged: George A. Romero, Horror, Land of the Dead, Misunderstood Movies, Reviews, Zombies