Rebel Moon (2023) Review
Rebel Moon (2023) rates 1 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Zack Snyder pitched this to Lucasfilm as a Star Wars film, was refused, and made it anyway with the names changed. It is Seven Samurai with the recruitment…
Tag: Siege
A siege traps everyone in one place and lets pressure do the work. This tag collects reviews of films and fiction built on siege structure, and what the form teaches about confinement, resources and nerve.
2000s[REC] (2007) Review
[REC] (2007) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Seventy-eight minutes, one apartment building, a television reporter and a cameraman who never stops filming. The last five minutes in the penthouse are the most frightening sequence in any…
2000sPontypool (2008) Review
Pontypool (2008) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A radio DJ in a church basement in rural Ontario reports an outbreak he never sees, and the infection turns out to be carried by the English language. Almost…
2000sLand of the Dead (2005) Review
Land of the Dead (2005) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Romero finally got a studio budget after twenty years and used it to make a film about a walled city where the rich live in a…
2000sDead Set (2008) Review
Dead Set (2008) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Charlie Brooker locked the Big Brother house against a zombie apocalypse, cast the real presenter as herself, shot some of it in the actual house, and then refused…
1980sDay of the Dead (1985) Review
Day of the Dead (1985) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Romero's budget was cut in half and he rewrote it into a chamber piece about twelve people in a bunker who hate each other. The zombies…
2010sThe Magnificent Seven (2016) Review
The Magnificent Seven (2016) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Antoine Fuqua takes the same structure, casts it the way the American West really looked, and gives the villain a coherent economic argument. The last forty minutes…
1960sThe Magnificent Seven (1960) Review
The Magnificent Seven (1960) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Kurosawa's Seven Samurai relocated to the Mexican border, shortened by an hour, and improved in one specific way. Every gunman gets an introduction that is also an…
2000sOpen Range (2003) Review
Open Range (2003) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Costner directed a slow, patient Western about two cattlemen who decide to kill a rancher, and then staged the best gunfight in the genre's last forty years. It…
1950sRio Bravo (1959) Review
Rio Bravo (1959) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Howard Hawks made it as a direct rebuttal to High Noon, which John Wayne called un-American because the marshal asks townspeople for help. It is a hangout film…
1950s3:10 to Yuma (1957) Review
3:10 to Yuma (1957) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A rancher takes two hundred dollars to hold an outlaw in a hotel room until a train arrives, and almost the entire film is the two of…
Film SeriesUnder Siege 1 & 2 (1992, 1995)
Die Hard formula adapted with Tommy Lee Jones substantial in the first. The Under Siege films are a two-installment action franchise starring Steven Seagal as Casey Ryback, a Navy SEAL whose operational skills are deployed against terrorist takeovers of confined…