A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Thursday, March 20, 2025

Smile (Parker Finn, 2022)


Cast: Sosie Bacon, Kyle Gallner, Jessie T. Usher, Robin Weigert, Kal Penn, Rob Morgan, Gillian Zinser, Judy Reyes, Jack Sochet, Nick Arapoglu, Perry Strong, Matthew Lamb, Dora Kiss. Screenplay: Parker Finn. Cinematography: Charlie Saroff. Production design: Lester Cohen. Film editing: Elliot Greenberg. Music: Cristobal Tapia de Veer. 

The rictus that spreads across the faces of those who are about to kill or be killed is probably the scariest thing about Smile, a routine horror movie that has not much going for it other than some committed performances, particularly by Sosie Bacon as the psychiatrist being driven mad by a supernatural being. Horror movie fans accepted it despite a phony premise and some deep inconsistencies in the plotting, so it spawned the inevitable Smile 2, from the same writer-director, Parker Finn, in 2024. You know who you are and whether you want to watch it. 

Posted by at
Links: , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)