Thor: The Dark World is even better than the first film because that core relationship between Thor and Loki is still there and is still as convincing as before, but all the other bits and pieces are much improved.
The use of the constant rain and the flooding of the area as thematic elements never gets heavy-handed and enhances the beauty of the landscape rising up around these characters.
This time around, most of the creative teams just focused on figuring out how to get a first person perspective and then forgot to give us an interesting story.
In an alternate universe very much like our own, few people have ever heard of Jason Voorhees but everybody knows horribly burned summer camp killer Cropsy!
The film's narrative itself slowly adopts a hallucinogenic style, with long silences, slow-motion sequences, mind-bending fast-cut psychedelic imagery and then suddenly the medium becomes the message.
Peter Strickland has crafted a love letter to cinema itself, specifically to the Italian giallo cinema of the 70s -- the world of Argento, Bava, Fulci, and more.
All in all, The Purge is a problematic film, wearing its politics on its sleeve and embracing nearly every cliché imaginable with the standard home invasion scenario.
This is a darkly fascinating and original story that doesn’t end well for anyone involved, but it has a lot of heart. It's good to see Jen and Sylvia Soska get a break and keep moving upward and onward.
On paper, it sounds like any number of such films that flourished in the late 70’s-early-80’s slasher boom. In execution, there’s a reason why it’s still remembered today.
