I loved Constantine and might watch it again one day (I rarely re-watch anything). It’s such a beautifully-shot film. And not surprisingly, at least part of the reason it looks so gorgeous is because it was shot on those unmatched Panavision Panaflex Platinum cameras with Panavision Primo lenses.

The video hints at it, but I think the reason the movie flopped is it does not hold your hand. It kicks you into the world and lets you sink or swim. Most sink because they want their thinking done for them. And Constantine is just not that kind of film.

Great analysis of that scene. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is such an excellent film and that scene is perfect. One of my favorites of any film made in the last decade. I missed on first watch that it is James Dean in the mural in the background when the girls are dumpster diving.

The thing about a Tarantino film (and really most films to a somewhat lesser extent) is that nothing is accidental.

One film where I disagreed with Roger Ebert pretty strongly is the bathtub drowning scene in Constantine. He disliked it (and the film) for the same reasons that I love it: the scene is horrible and beautiful. It’s nasty, and not in the sense of any gore or even anything sexual. It’s horrifying what Constantine does to Angela — both his direct actions of bringing her to the edge of death by drowning and what you find out she’s witnessing immediately after. Weisz’s acting when Angela realizes Constantine does not intend to let her up is perfect.

It’s all just so wrong. And that’s what makes it a great scene.

Ebert was not a fan of horror. And it shows in his misassessment of the scene and film.

I love this fight scene; one of the more realistic ever put to film. She’s absolutely getting trounced by a guy twice as big and strong as she is (and who is equally well-trained) until she gets some help and then gets the upper hand.

That’s from Soderbergh’s Haywire — an underrated film that is endlessly entertaining.

I think Steven Spielberg’s best movie is Munich. Just such a tense nasty little beast.

I’m not sure how to put this exactly without sounding dismissive as I think Spielberg is a great director, but Munich is his only film that feels fully adult.

That scene really speaks to how closely delusion and aspiration dwell together in the human heart. The entire film is just as good.

I wish this video weren’t true. But it is. And it’s a microcosm of all that’s wrong with contemporary filmmaking in general (not just trailers).

The 1963 Cleopatra movie itself was only ok, but the entrance scene into Rome is great. That’s not even the whole thing. It used ~10,000 extras and nearly bankrupted the studio. It’s not all that historically accurate, but it still captures something real about how those times differed from our own.