The Last Boy Scout
A piece for The Telegraph on Tony Scott and Shane Black’s compromised action classic The Last Boy Scout. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2016/05/31/who-killed-the-last-boy-scout-bruce-willis-shane-black-and-the-m/
Month: May 2016
Throne of Blood
Empire “Masterpiece” #119 / Issue #292 / October, 2013 There’s a school of thought that says Akira Kurosawa was able to cross over to western audiences because he was more palatable than his Japanese contemporaries like Mizoguchi, Shindo, Kobayashi and Teshigahara. Kurosawa’s films were, famously, remade in the west as the likes of A… Continue reading Throne of Blood
Halloween
Empire “Masterpiece” #144 / Issue #318 / December, 2015 It’s all there in the opening minutes: Halloween is about the music and the Panaglide. Three piano notes and a weird time signature are all the film requires to create immediate tension over a black screen with a steadily approaching pumpkin. Halloween is a small… Continue reading Halloween
Once Upon a Time in the West
Empire “Masterpiece” #108 / Issue #281 / November, 2012 The clue’s in the title: Once Upon a Time in the West is a fairy story, a mythologised version of the American West, peopled with immediately recognisable archetypes. It’s also a commentary on the Western genre itself, and a celebration in the form of a… Continue reading Once Upon a Time in the West
Stagecoach
Empire “Masterpiece” #82 / Issue #255 / September, 2010 John Ford’s Stagecoach is about as linear as adventures come. Based on a pulp-magazine story by Ernest Haycox (there are some claims that it was based on Guy de Maupassant’s Boule de Suif, but they’re probably nonsense) the film’s task is to get a coach-full… Continue reading Stagecoach
The Wild Bunch
Empire “Masterpiece” #54 / Issue #225 / March, 2008 “We’ve got to start thinking beyond our guns,” muses William Holden, not long after the bloodiest shoot-out 1969 audiences had ever seen. Minutes earlier, a bank robbery in the small town of Starbuck has descended into carnage, with Holden’s Pike and his titular Wild Bunch… Continue reading The Wild Bunch
