Salon.com > Film Salon http://www.salon.com Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 What to watch instead of “Conan” http://www.salon.com/2011/09/17/solomon_kane_review/ http://www.salon.com/2011/09/17/solomon_kane_review/#comments Sat, 17 Sep 2011 15:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/09/17/solomon_kane_review The world of film distribution can be as cruel as a gang of bored silver miners who throw a longhorn bull into a deep pit with a grizzly bear just to see which will survive -- and just as senseless. That explains why this year's "Conan the Barbarian" was allowed to stink up 4,500 screens, while 2009's far superior "Solomon Kane" hasn't even been afforded the scant dignity of a U.S. DVD release. However, you can already save "Solomon Kane" to your Netflix queue, and it's readily available in all shades of legality through those DVD sellers at book conventions (where I got my copy along with "The Star Wars Holiday Special"). Despite its lack of official US release, this movie is finding its audience like note in a bottle tossed adrift by the ghostly hand of author Robert E. Howard, the suicidal Texan who created both Conan and Kane during the pulp fiction heyday of the 1920s and 30s.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/09/17/solomon_kane_review/feed/ 22 The trippiest martial arts movie ever? http://www.salon.com/2011/08/27/norwegian_ninja_review/ http://www.salon.com/2011/08/27/norwegian_ninja_review/#comments Sat, 27 Aug 2011 15:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/08/27/norwegian_ninja_review When you review straight-to-DVD movies, you see a lot trailers built around Kimbo Slice fighting Rampage Jackson in a cage intercut with shaky cam footage of strippers working the pole. But every so often I run across one full of nothing but sheer, unadulterated WTF. If trailers like these are the precious metals of the video world, then the one for "Norwegian Ninja" is pure gold valued at nearly $1,900 an ounce.

In a little under two minutes, the "Norwegian Ninja" trailer combines the Scandinavian martial arts madness that the title suggests and footage of miniatures set ablaze with flames that look like they're coming out of a Zippo lighter. And there are crazy-looking amphibious assault vehicles and sheep -- lots and lots of sheep -- and a synth score that resembles the repetitive triumphalist theme to the Chuck Norris epic "Delta Force," only more somber and European. "Be one of us," a stern blond man wearing glasses and a black karate uniform urges, "Be a Ninja." I am so there.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/08/27/norwegian_ninja_review/feed/ 18 Why are so many modern action movies terrible? http://www.salon.com/2011/08/24/chaos_cinema_shaky_camera/ http://www.salon.com/2011/08/24/chaos_cinema_shaky_camera/#comments Wed, 24 Aug 2011 12:25:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/08/24/chaos_cinema_shaky_camera "The only art here is the art of confusion." That's one of many corrosive lines from "Chaos Cinema: The Decline and Fall of Action Filmmaking," a two-part video essay about the shaky camera and super-fast cutting that dominate so many modern action films and TV shows.

Written and edited by a young German film student named Matthias Stork, the piece gathers together a lot of the complaints that I've heard and read about contemporary action films into a sort of manifesto. The piece debuted earlier this week at Press Play, a video essay-driven blog that I founded. Stork created it as way to explain how action film style has changed from the more stately type seen in such films as "Bullitt," "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Die Hard" into something much faster, more frenetic and -- Stork believes -- sloppier and stupider. 

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/08/24/chaos_cinema_shaky_camera/feed/ 50 The Fantastic Five http://www.salon.com/2011/07/22/friday_night_seitz/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/22/friday_night_seitz/#comments Fri, 22 Jul 2011 23:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/07/22/friday_night_seitz I love the idea of the Five Test. Steven Hyden of the Onion A/V Club first proposed it in a July 19 article asserting that the best test of pop musicians' greatness wasn't popularity or critical esteem, but consistency of output, and that one good way of measuring that was to ask if the musician had released five albums in a row consisting of nothing but great material; if the answer is yes, they have to be admitted to the pantheon of greats. "Lots of artists have five or more classic albums (not including EPs or live records)," he wrote, "but the ability to string them together back-to-back means being in the kind of zone that's normally associated with dominant college women's basketball dynasties." Independent Film Channel columnist Matt Singer riffed on this notion, proposing a "Five Films" test for directors. I disagree with some of the writers' picks for "great" musicians or directors, and I suppose it goes without saying that "great" is as subjective a word as "beautiful." Still, it makes for a fun exercise, if only because it forces writers to put their taste on display and invite readers to throw rotten fruit at it.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/22/friday_night_seitz/feed/ 57 The politics of Captain America http://www.salon.com/2011/07/19/captain_america_politics/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/19/captain_america_politics/#comments Tue, 19 Jul 2011 21:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/07/19/captain_america_politics In the early morning hours of Oct. 30, 2010, a guy in a Captain America suit staked out a spot on the National Mall as he waited for Jon Stewart's left-leaning Rally to Restore Sanity. "Hey, Steve Rogers," I called out the name of Captain America's secret identity. He turned around, flashed a big grin at my geekiness and then snapped a salute as I took his picture.

A few months later, in April 2011, a different man wearing a Captain America costume stood on the National Mall. Like the Cap from October, he was there for a rally, only 2011's Cap was a Tea Party patriot clamoring for a government shutdown while holding up a sign that read: "Shut it down/Save America."

After the July 22 release of the summer blockbuster "Captain America: the First Avenger," we'll probably see even more Captain Americas waving placards at protests for all parts of the political spectrum. The Red, White and Blue Avenger is and always has been a potent political image, but whose side would Captain America be on? Would he be a New Deal Democrat slinging his mighty shield for new public works programs or would he be rallying with the Tea Party to lower taxes on billionaires and gut Medicare? Whose Captain America is he anyway?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/19/captain_america_politics/feed/ 28 “Breaking Bad’s” 10 best moments http://www.salon.com/2011/07/15/friday_night_seitz_breaking_bad/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/15/friday_night_seitz_breaking_bad/#comments Fri, 15 Jul 2011 23:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/07/15/friday_night_seitz_breaking_bad I spend a lot of time talking about TV with friends. I've noticed that in discussions of "Breaking Bad," maybe more than any other current drama, the sentences tend to start with phrases like, "And what about that moment where ..." Walter White's troubling journey from cancer-stricken schoolteacher to feared crystal meth dealer on "Breaking Bad" is one of the most remarkable tales in the still-young history of cable drama, and more so than on most series, that journey is expressed in a series of perfectly shaped, unnervingly powerful moments.

Here are my 10 favorite "Breaking Bad" moments. Please add yours in the Letters section.

Spoiler alert. This slide show discusses the first three seasons of "Breaking Bad" in considerable detail, and the Letters thread is likely to be even more in-depth. Do not read this slide show unless you 1) have seen all three seasons or 2) don't care about spoilers.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/15/friday_night_seitz_breaking_bad/feed/ 59 How to make a better “Pet Sematary” http://www.salon.com/2011/07/09/hammer_films_returns/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/09/hammer_films_returns/#comments Sat, 09 Jul 2011 15:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/07/09/hammer_films_returns Much like a corpse stitched together by Dr. Frankenstein or Dracula lying in a crypt with a stake through his heart, Hammer Films never seems quite dead. Starting with "The Curse of Frankenstein" in 1957, this modest British studio infused familiar gothic horrors with ample doses of gore and sexuality, causing film historian Carlos Clarens to describe its output as "a blatant, almost athletic display of sadism and necrophilia" in his seminal "Illustrated History of the Horror Film" (Putnam, 1967). With Hammer, breasts were always on the verge of bursting out of corsets, Christopher Lee's Dracula bit into a maiden's neck with an unrestrained lust, and Peter Cushing never flinched as he sawed off a limb during one of his experiments. What's more, all of this was shot in full-blooded color while American studios were still cranking out giant-bug flicks in black and white.

Hammer became the dominant name in horror in the 1960s through the seemingly unstoppable Dracula and Frankenstein franchises plus such occasional bursts of inspiration as "Kiss of the Vampire" (1963) and "The Devil Rides Out" (1968). By sticking mostly to Victorian period pieces where Englishmen in mauve smoking jackets battled castle-dwelling evils that menaced European sex kittens, the studio was freer to push the boundaries of permissibility than if the mayhem had taken place in contemporary times.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/09/hammer_films_returns/feed/ 6 “Curb Your Enthusiasm’s” 10 best episodes http://www.salon.com/2011/07/08/friday_night_seitz_curb_your_enthusiasm/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/08/friday_night_seitz_curb_your_enthusiasm/#comments Fri, 08 Jul 2011 23:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/07/08/friday_night_seitz_curb_your_enthusiasm "Curb Your Enthusiasm," which starts its eighth season on HBO this Sunday, specializes in the comedy of mortification -- scenes that nail hypocrisy, selfishness and delusions so mercilessly that they prompt both laughs and revulsion. Even the most devoted viewers often find themselves watching the self-righteous, blundering high jinks of creator-co-writer-star Larry David through the spaces between their fingers.

But David and his collaborators don't just pile outrage upon outrage to see what they can get away with. There's a structure, a rhythm and a point to every episode, just as there was on David's previous series, NBC's "Seinfeld." And just like any other ambitious, long-running series, this one inspires obsessive scrutiny and list-making. This slide show ranks my 10 favorite "Curb" episodes; the list is weighted toward the earlier season, but there are a few later entries, too. I hope that it is, to quote one of Larry's catchphrases, "Pretty, pretty, pretty... pretty good." And I hope you'll share your picks in the Letters section.

A word of warning, though: Considering the raunchy, profane, sexually frank, politically incorrect nature of "Curb," most of these entries -- and the clips linked within them -- are not safe for work.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/08/friday_night_seitz_curb_your_enthusiasm/feed/ 64 Your guide to Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life” http://www.salon.com/2011/07/02/watching_tree_of_life/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/02/watching_tree_of_life/#comments Sat, 02 Jul 2011 16:54:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/07/02/watching_tree_of_life How does one watch Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life"?

That is the question. Malick's domestic epic is the most talked-about movie of the summer, and surely the most divisive -- a two-hour-and-18-minute sound-and-light show that doubles as a nostalgia piece. Avoiding a strict linear plot, it instead offers a rush of images, sounds and sensations. It consists of fragments of a life remembered (and in a few cases, imagined) by its hero, an architect named Jack (Sean Penn), with special attention paid to Jack's boyhood in 1950s Waco, Texas, where he was torn between the old-line machismo of his father (Brad Pitt) and the angelic, almost childlike openness of his mother (Jessica Chastain).

With this piece, I was aiming to write an "explainer" similar to this checklist of Spielbergian elements in J.J. Abrams' early-Spielberg-eseque sci-fi adventure "Super 8," but Malick is working in a different mode, or on a different intellectual plane, and is after different things. And he has over the years become a director that one cannot "explain" or otherwise pin down. Although Malick's filmography has recurring themes and images and situations just like any other director's, those aspects are not self-contained enough to be excavated like artifacts, labeled and put on display. One element tends to bleed into, or overlap with, others, in a way that makes the individual parts inseparable from the whole. More so than most directors' movies, Malick's films are all of a piece.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/02/watching_tree_of_life/feed/ 54 The 10 loudest movies ever!!! http://www.salon.com/2011/07/01/loudest_movies_slide_show/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/01/loudest_movies_slide_show/#comments Fri, 01 Jul 2011 21:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/07/01/loudest_movies_slide_show THIS INTRODUCTION IS WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS, BECAUSE ALL THE FILMS ON THIS LIST ARE LOUD.

WE DON'T JUST MEAN "LOUD" IN TERMS OF MEASURABLE DECIBEL LEVEL AND OVERALL AURAL INTENSITY. THESE FILMS ARE ALSO LOUD IN OTHER WAYS. THEY ARE MORE FLAMBOYANT AND AGGRESSIVE THAN OTHER FILMS, MORE SPECTACULAR, MORE INSISTENT IN HOW THEY COMMAND YOUR ATTENTION AND THEN MERCILESSLY BATTER YOUR EARS, EYES AND BRAIN CELLS WITH VOLLEY AFTER VOLLEY OF SPECTACULAR SENSATIONS. THEY ARE MOVIES, BUT THEY ARE ALSO VISCERAL EXPERIENCES.

THIS LIST CONTAINS WAR FILMS, SCIENCE FICTION MOVIES, ACTION PICTURES AND A CLASSIC OF JAPANESE ANIMATION THAT BOASTS SOME OF THE MOST GROTESQUE AND TERRIFYING SOUND EFFECTS IN MOVIE HISTORY. THERE ARE NO ROMANCES OR DELICATE CHAMBER DRAMAS OR OTHER, SUBTLER GENRES REPRESENTED ON THIS LIST BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT LOUD ENOUGH TO QUALIFY. WE HAVE ASSIGNED EACH ENTRY A NOISE-O-METER RATING. FEEL FREE TO DISPUTE OUR READING, BUT PLEASE BE SURE TO YELL, OTHERWISE WE WON'T BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND YOU. AND PLEASE ADD YOUR OWN FAVORITE LOUD FILMS IN THE LETTERS THREAD.

THANK YOU FOR READING, AND HAVE A WONDERFUL FOURTH OF JULY WEEKEND!!!!

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/01/loudest_movies_slide_show/feed/ 69 The 10 trippiest movies ever made http://www.salon.com/2011/06/24/friday_night_seitz_trippiest_movies/ http://www.salon.com/2011/06/24/friday_night_seitz_trippiest_movies/#comments Fri, 24 Jun 2011 23:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/06/24/friday_night_seitz_trippiest_movies Prepare to have your mind blown.

In honor of Nicolas Roeg's 1976 sci-fi headscratcher "The Man Who Fell to Earth" being rereleased in New York, and the continuing national rollout of Terrence Malick's time-fracturing memory piece "The Tree of Life," Salon presents its list -- all right, fine, my personal list -- of great trippy movies.

My list includes a couple of acknowledged, popular classics, a feature-length montage, two works by masters of experimental cinema, and an underappreciated recent film by a surrealist whose name rhymes with Wavid Clynch. Will you add your own picks to the Letters section? Or will you only think that you're adding them? What if you added them, and at the exact moment that you added them, in another universe an alternate version of you was adding the exact same titles? What if that alternate version of you had the same name as you, only spelled backward?

Duuuuude.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/06/24/friday_night_seitz_trippiest_movies/feed/ 181 Peter Falk 1927-2011 http://www.salon.com/2011/06/24/peter_falk/ http://www.salon.com/2011/06/24/peter_falk/#comments Fri, 24 Jun 2011 22:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/06/24/peter_falk I met Peter Falk only once, more than 20 years and dozens of performances ago, when he was barely 60 but struck the juvenile version of me as an immensely battered ship's figurehead, a wise and soulful spirit who had weathered the wild storms of artistic greatness and the flat tides of showbiz mediocrity. It was not long after he had played a version of himself as a former angel (called in the credits "Der Filmstar") in Wim Wenders' gorgeous "Wings of Desire," and at almost the same time had shaped a different generation's sensibility as the grandfather/narrator of "The Princess Bride."

He talked about how much he missed his friend and collaborator, indie-film pioneer John Cassavetes, who had recently died. But when I asked Falk whether he'd rather be remembered for his performances in Cassavetes' "Husbands" or "A Woman Under the Influence" than as the professionally befuddled Lt. Columbo of TV fame, he gave me a tolerant smile. I've long since lost any transcript of this interview, but as I recall it now, he said that Columbo had been very good to him, and he was very grateful. If the public wanted him to play that guy for the rest of his life, he was fine with it.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/06/24/peter_falk/feed/ 31 The 10 worst dads in movie history http://www.salon.com/2011/06/17/fathers_day_friday_night_seitz/ http://www.salon.com/2011/06/17/fathers_day_friday_night_seitz/#comments Fri, 17 Jun 2011 23:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/06/17/fathers_day_friday_night_seitz Happy Father's Day, dear old Dad, you strong, wise, kindhearted man, you beacon of integrity, you ... Oh, wait, that was last year's slide show.

This year we're serving up a hall of fame of truly terrible movie fathers. We're got drunks. We've got pedophiles. We've got a thieving rapist gangster redneck, a homicidal preacher, an intergalactic warlord and a lawyer who smells faintly of sulfur. Add your own rotten patriarchs in the Letters section.

And to all you fathers out there: Go ahead and raise a toast to yourself. Whatever your failings, you're almost surely a better dad than anyone in this sorry bunch.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/06/17/fathers_day_friday_night_seitz/feed/ 98 A guide to Spielberg shout-outs in “Super 8″ http://www.salon.com/2011/06/11/what_super_8_took_from_steven_spielberg/ http://www.salon.com/2011/06/11/what_super_8_took_from_steven_spielberg/#comments Sat, 11 Jun 2011 18:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/06/11/what_super_8_took_from_steven_spielberg "Super 8" has been promoted as a film in the spirit of Steven Spielberg's early popcorn-centric movies, and it definitely has the pedigree. Beyond sporting Spielberg's name as executive producer, the film is directed by Spielberg obsessive J.J. Abrams ("Lost," the 2009 "Star Trek"). Abrams is one of many protégés mentored by Spielberg over the past few decades. A quarter-century ago, Spielberg saw Super 8mm films made by Abrams and his childhood friend Matt Reeves ("Cloverfield," "Let Me In") and hired them to cut together his own home movies.

No huge shock, then, that "Super 8" would feel like one-stop shopping for devotees of the filmmaker's early features -- the ones he made before moving into more historically focused or adult-themed work.

What follows is an alphabetized list of Spielberg titles, plot elements, and visual signatures that Abrams invokes in "Super 8." There are so many that we have surely missed a few; feel free to add others in the Letters section.

MAJOR SPOILER WARNING. This article discusses "Super 8" in detail. If you haven't seen it yet and don't want to know anything about the plot, stop reading now.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/06/11/what_super_8_took_from_steven_spielberg/feed/ 22 The best fake Spielberg movies http://www.salon.com/2011/06/10/fake_spielberg_movies_slideshow/ http://www.salon.com/2011/06/10/fake_spielberg_movies_slideshow/#comments Fri, 10 Jun 2011 23:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/06/10/fake_spielberg_movies_slideshow Younger viewers don't have any preconceived notions about Steven Spielberg, and likely think of him as a mainstream artist-showman who is comfortable working in a wide array of genres, from the historical epic ("Amistad," "Schindler's List") to the caper comedy ("Catch Me If You Can") to Capra-eseque modern fables ("The Terminal") and grimy, hard-edged science fiction ("Minority Report," "A.I.," "War of the Worlds"). Prior to the mid-'80s one-two punch of "The Color Purple" and "Empire of the Sun," he was stereotyped as a fusion of Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, mixing wonder and terror and concerning himself mainly with visceral thrills, laughs and sentiment. He continued to stay in touch with that side of his talent after the transition into so-called adult films, with mixed results: the third and fourth "Indiana Jones" movies, the first two "Jurassic Park" pictures and so forth.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/06/10/fake_spielberg_movies_slideshow/feed/ 86 How to make the perfect movie montage http://www.salon.com/2011/06/03/best_montages_slide_show/ http://www.salon.com/2011/06/03/best_montages_slide_show/#comments Fri, 03 Jun 2011 23:28:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/06/03/best_montages_slide_show What is a montage? The most basic definition is a sequence that jumps a film's story ahead -- a sequence of shots edited in a way that compresses both time and information. There are other definitions and uses of the word -- Soviet-style montage, for example, uses editing to build arguments through images. But for purposes of this slide show, we're highlighting the most basic definition: a sequence that cuts to the chase with style, or that packs enough information to fill a whole other film into a few graceful minutes.

Think of the wedding/baptism sequence in "The Godfather," for instance, or the breakfast table sequence in "Citizen Kane," or most of "Days of Heaven." Or better yet, watch the montage about montages in "Team America: World Police" -- a gag reel that doubles as a lesson in film grammar. ("Show a lot of things happening at once!/Remind everyone of what's goin' on!")

Our list of favorites cites two sports movies, a Chinese kung fu epic, an Italian tear-jerker, an American tear-jerker, and an animated kid flick with an opening so poignant that it could make Genghis Khan sob like a grandma cutting onions. Add your own favorites in the Letters section. And be quick about it. The readers haven't got all day!

YouTube/brrrrrrrratt

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/06/03/best_montages_slide_show/feed/ 66 All things shining: The films of Terrence Malick http://www.salon.com/2011/06/02/terrence_malick_video_essays_all_things_shining/ http://www.salon.com/2011/06/02/terrence_malick_video_essays_all_things_shining/#comments Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:32:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/06/01/terrence_malick_video_essays_all_things_shining Filmmaker Terrence Malick's Palme d'Or-winning, critically divisive epic "The Tree of Life" opened in limited release last Friday and will gradually expand to other cities throughout the summer. Over the years I've written quite a few pieces about his work, including a series of articles for the House Next Door and a recent slide show for Salon. Over the past couple of weeks I've also written, narrated and edited a series of video essays about Malick's first four movies: "Badlands," "Days of Heaven," "The Thin Red Line" and "The New World." 

The five-part series "All Things Shining: The Films of Terrence Malick" is compiled below. I've also included links to accompanying articles at Moving Image Source, the online magazine of the Museum of the Moving Image, where these pieces originally appeared.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/06/02/terrence_malick_video_essays_all_things_shining/feed/ 14 The other new “Thor” movie http://www.salon.com/2011/05/28/thor_review/ http://www.salon.com/2011/05/28/thor_review/#comments Sat, 28 May 2011 15:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/05/28/thor_review The new "Thor: Tales of Asgard" animated DVD may be the first film to need a "spoiler alert" warning label stuck onto its cover. The plot of this movie is nearly identical to director Kenneth Branagh's blockbuster take on the comic book Thunder God, which goes a long way in explaining why Marvel and Lionsgate released this effort nearly two weeks after the live-action "Thor" hit theaters. The usual protocol for these budget cartoons is to get them onto shelves sometime before the big summer movie so Marvel can introduce any superheroes who aren't Spider-Man, the Hulk or Wolverine to those kids who don't read comics, but do pester their parents into buying DVDs while on family shopping trips to Target.

Just like in the movie that you either rushed to see or are avoiding entirely, in "Tales of Asgard" young Thor heads off to the realm of the Frost Giants with Loki and the Warriors Three in tow and sparks an inter-dimensional incident. In both films, this totally pisses off Odin, Thor's gray-bearded buzzkill all-father who's always going on about diplomacy and restraint like he's John Kerry or something. This time around, however, Thor isn't out to launch a preemptive strike with faulty intelligence. He's only after the flaming sword of Surtur the Fire Demon so he can impress his dad. Odin also doesn't send Thor to Earth to teach him humility, leaving Thor and his pals tasked with getting the hell out of Jotunheim while being pursued by Frost Giants that are way burlier than those skinny Orc-like things from the theatrical "Thor."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/05/28/thor_review/feed/ 9 The 10 greatest sequels of all time http://www.salon.com/2011/05/27/best_sequels_of_all_time_slide_show/ http://www.salon.com/2011/05/27/best_sequels_of_all_time_slide_show/#comments Fri, 27 May 2011 23:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/05/27/best_sequels_of_all_time_slide_show Does this piece count as a sequel about sequels? You bet. Last week I offered my list of the worst sequels of all time; today I'm highlighting what are, in my highly subjective opinion, the 10 greatest sequels ever made. The list includes a western, science fiction, horror, a swashbuckler, a romance, an epic drama, a cartoon and other pleasures. Since sequels have been with us as long as movies, this is a rich subject, and since I limited myself to just 10 choices, that means there's a lot of room for second-guessing and "Where the hell is 'X'?" complaints.

A note about methodology: I deliberately excluded films that could be considered "reboots" rather than direct follow-ups, which explains the absence of, for instance, "Casino Royale," the greatest of all James Bond films. And as you'll see, this list is weighted toward movies that directly continue story lines or situations established in earlier pictures.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/05/27/best_sequels_of_all_time_slide_show/feed/ 86 The worst sequels of all time http://www.salon.com/2011/05/20/worst_sequels_all_time/ http://www.salon.com/2011/05/20/worst_sequels_all_time/#comments Fri, 20 May 2011 23:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/05/20/worst_sequels_all_time Summer is the season of sequels. Today brings the fourth entry in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise -- a film that Salon's Andrew O'Hehir kind of liked, but that other critics haven't fancied at all. And next week brings two more sequels: "The Hangover 2" and "Kung Fu Panda 2." Will they equal the originals? Or will they be featured on future editions of today's slide show on the Worst Sequels of All Time? Among other cinematic abominations, we've got a superhero movie, a car crash movie, a couple of monster movies, and a sequel to a certain 1970s musical drama that's so atrocious that people who have seen it are still having trouble processing just how awful it is. Add your own pet outrages in the Letters section; the resulting list of toxically dreadful movies is almost certain to the more enjoyable than the upcoming "Transformers 3."

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