Tag Archives: N

Night of the Hunter 5/5

Night of the Hunter

Superbly crafted movie directed by Charles Laughton, and it’s a damn shame it was its only directorial effort. It looks great, with some very stylised scenes borrowing from German expressionism, and reminds me a lot of another film that similarly borrows, The Bride of Frankenstein (Laughton was actually married to the Bride, Elsa Lanchester!)

It’s beautiful, constantly suprising, has one of the most imposing and scary performance ever put to film by Mitchum, and whilst he imposes, he meets his match in the upright, kind-hearted Ms Cooper.

The scene where they sing as she sits guard with a shotgun is one of cinema’s greatest. And the children floating downriver through a fairytale depression America isn’t far behind.

National Lampoon’s Vacation 4/5

National Lampoon's Vacation

Very funny movie that started the Vacation series, which clearly peaked at Christmas Vacation.

The Griswalds are fully-developed characters from the off (well, Clark and Ellen anyway, the kids were always changing actors/ages), and it’s also fun to see Cousin Eddie also fully formed.

There are many laughs throughout, as mishap piles on mishap, and Chase starts acting crazy.

Great comedy writing from John Hughes, and great comedy direction from Harold Ramis.

The Nutty Professor 1963 3/5

The Nutty Professor

Some rather fine comedy scenes, in particular the hangover scene, the first-person perspective of Buddy’s first appearance in public, the first jeckyll-and-hide-like transformation scene, Buddy sharp-talking the dean, and the parental family home flashback. Other bits didn’t work so well, such as the mawkish public transformation of Buddy from himself back to Julius – Jerry Lewis doing ‘feel sorry for me’ schtick is often cringey, and this is very cringey.

Those college kids looked way too old to be there.

I think Jerry was working out some Dean issues in this.

Never Sleep Again 4/5

Never Sleep Again

Ridiculously long, but rather glorious documentary about all the movies of the Nightmare on Elm Street series (except the very recent remake). You get actors’ insights, special effects guys, producers, where the seed ideas for each movie came from, you get everything you could possibly want. And it doesn’t flag until maybe the last 10 minutes, where it turns into a love-in about New Line – but even this is redeemed by the closing titles, where various actors from the series deliver the best lines.

This documentary made me realise two things: The Freddy series is clearly the best horror franchise of the 80s; Robert Englund is fantastic.

Got 4 hours free? Watch this.

Nightmare on Elm Street 2010 1/5

Nightmare on Elm Street 2010

This was really quite poor. It had the flashy graphics, the beats, but it felt lifeless, characterless and pointless. I felt sorry for the actors, who did a sterling job with what they were given, but this really felt like a Michael-Bay-Directing-Transformers version of a horror movie. I wondered if they felt they were trapped in a nightmare during the making of this movie. The whole child molester angle was also quite tasteless as it recalled the behaviours of real-life child molesters, and made you feel uncomfortable.

It had two moments I liked, which helped break up the monotony. The part where one of the characters dies, and Freddy explains there is brain function 7 minutes after death, so he still has time to play… and the part where the parents are hunting Freddy down and he’s fleeing, which was quite good. It too often left me bored or slightly offended.

Still, not as completely terrible as ‘New Nightmare’ though.