Author: Jakub Flasz

How to Rank a Perfect Filmography, or Happy Birthday, Quentin!

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With the recent news of Quentin Tarantino allegedly setting his sights on another movie circulating on the mouths of film bloggers, tweeters and other denizens of the widespread online film community, the customary conversations regarding the quality of his filmmaking output have also arisen in the same circles. Now, I have never been particularly fond of writing listicles; though I won’t go as far as to claim that if you see me writing one, you should do me a favour and take me behind the shed to put me out of my misery (that’s likely because I am pretty sure I have written some in the past). However, these recent revelations of Tarantino circling another movie, which by his own admission may be his last even though I’d be willing to bet a substantial amount of money on his coming out of this self-imposed retirement sooner than he would ever imagine, combined with the fact he is turning sixty today, brought me to write a few words about the way I go about ranking his movies.  

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65 (2023)

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Imagine you wake up from your cryostasis, jolted into lucidity by the ship computer telling you a collision is imminent. You sober up rapidly and, propelled by a sense of duty mixed with well-trained reflexes, you make your way to the cockpit with a hope of successfully navigating through a swarm of asteroids. You fail. You were never meant to succeed anyway, but that’s beside the point. You must find a place to crash land and you therefore divert the ship towards the nearest planet.

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Scream VI (2023)

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I think it goes without saying that most franchises, especially in the genre of horror, tend to get progressively more braindead as time goes on and by the time you see a number six or seven to the right of the title, chances are that originality had long been defenestrated in favour of keeping the series alive at all cost. However, an oft-interesting by-product of this process is that these further-down-the-spiral instalments in your favourite slasher franchises may occasionally develop their own personalities on the back of being wacky, which may germinate their eventual cult appeal. After all, even though Jason Takes Manhattan, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation could never be accused of even trying to take themselves seriously, let alone of attempting to evolve the series in any meaningful direction, fans will always find ways to enjoy them. As long as they are fun to watch, that is. 

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Creed III (2023)

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The Rocky series remains one of the arguably most interesting film franchises in Hollywood history. From its New Hollywood beginnings and earning acclaim for Sylvester Stallone on the back of his well-deserved Oscar for writing to evolving into pastiche in the 80s, descending into obscurity, experiencing a brief revival and eventually coming back under the refurbished guise of the Creed legacy subseries, it is a veritable goldmine for popculture historians and aficionados of earnest drama. Yet, as diverse thematically and tonally as it has been, the series had always been underpinned by one constant factor – the involvement of one Sylvester Stallone who wrote, directed and/or starred in most of them. And even – as was the case with Creed – in cases where Ryan Coogler did the writing and directing and the narrative focus was shifted away from Rocky, Stallone’s character was still instrumental to the development of the story and remained inseparable from the film’s overall success.  

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Nostalgia Sequels, Dinosaur Cloning and the Diminishing Returns of Dopamine Chasing

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‘Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should’, says Ian Malcolm – all clad in black like a nerd rock star – to the congregation of genetic engineers swooning over their wondrous achievement of cloning long-extinct dinosaurs in Steven Spielberg’s classic Jurassic Park. The lesson of the 1993 classic, which by the way is celebrating its 30th birthday this year, is that we should perhaps think twice before acting on our radical ideas because we may not have the acumen or necessary understanding of the world to handle the consequences.  

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Cocaine Bear (2023)

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It honestly feels as though I was about to repeat myself because on the occasion of writing up my thoughts on Plane I managed to weave it around the concept of February being a singular time in the year where you can get to see movies that normally would head straight either to your local bargain bin or to the far corner of the Netflix library. And here we go again because Cocaine Bear is available for you to see in cinemas and – to make it a little bit more bizarre and culturally intriguing – it seems to be bringing a reasonable box office revenue, despite the fact it is barely a functioning movie.  

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M. Night Shyamalan’s Cinema of Religious Environmental Activism

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If there is anything we can say with absolute certainty about Knock at the Cabin, M. Night Shyamalan’s latest directorial effort, it is that it is incredibly familiar and immediately invites reviewers to see it in the context of the man’s previous work. Indeed, Shyamalan seems to be a creature of habit compelled to ‘go back to the well’ and revisit themes and ideas which have haunted his existence throughout his entire career. However, it seems that at least some of the contents of that well may not have been appreciated by audiences the way they perhaps should have. 

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Plane (2023)

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The first few months of any given year are commonly seen as a dumping ground for movies that studio executives don’t seem to hold too much hope for, such as stand-alone non-franchised action thrillers, horrors that just about missed the Halloween window, one or two rom-coms to mark Valentine’s Day, and prestige-adjacent dramas that weren’t nutritious enough to qualify as functional Oscar bait. In fact, there are more such periods peppered throughout the year, like the tail end of Summer when major blockbusters have already taken their crops and low-expectations affair come out from under the counter-programming umbrella, or the first weeks of autumn between the awards season fully winds up and when it is still a bit early for genre movies to make the most of these sweet Halloween dollars. But Q1 is where it’s at – the savannah of dad cinema, where Liam Neeson is the apex predator. The Liam King.  

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