Underworld: Awakening

#4 in my ranking of the Underworld franchise. It did not surprise me to read that this movie was going through new drafts even through filming. It feels like a movie built out of at least a dozen different script ideas, each one thrown into the mix after the next because one producer didn't like…

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Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

#1 in my ranking of the Underworld franchise. You know, I can dig this. One of the things that had dragged down the first two Underworld movies was the preponderance of lore that got intensely explained with a great sense of import. Here, that's not a problem because this is the lore. I'm also actually…

Bucking Broadway

#37 in my ranking of John Ford's filmography. This is better. Obviously built from the ground up as a feature length film, Bucking Broadway, John Ford's fourth feature length film (and only second surviving), as the sinews of a story that fills its screen time healthfully. It's another simple tale with broadly drawn characters and…

Underworld: Evolution

#3 in my ranking of the Underworld franchise. This feels like the next episode in a serial, picking up right where the previous episode left off to tell just the next adventure in the exciting life and times of Seline, vampire Death Dealer. It's a good thing that I have such affection for the first…

Straight Shooting

#54 in my ranking of John Ford's filmography. You can do subtlety in silent film, but it requires a certain attention to specific moments that go well beyond what we normally expect from sound films. You need to focus down with a small scope and bring out details that are harder to do without some…