Posts Tagged ‘A History of Violence (2005)’

Radio Armageddon

Way back in 1968, George A. Romero’s enormously influential horror Night of the Living Dead was first unleashed on unsuspecting audiences. Its deceptively simple set-up – a group of survivors barricade themselves away from apocalyptic events, the situation deteriorates as what’s outside threatens to get in – has been used so often since (to very good, very bad and indifferent effect) that it’s now largely a genre cliché.

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Saddle up

A chance to enjoy an entertaining (if conventional) Western…

It has a habit of coming back ’atcha, does the Western – while other genres have a tendency to become moribund over time, such as the traditional musical or the traditional vampire flick, the Old West is a tradition that a variety of directors have returned to over recent years, such as with Kevin Costner’s well-received Open Range (2003) and, a decade or so previously, Clint Eastwood’s marvellous fin de siècle opus, Unforgiven (1992).

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All his own work?

Carl Fogaty: Any last words before I blow your brains out, you miserable prick?
Tom Stall: I should have killed you back in Philly.
Carl Fogaty: Yeah Joey, you should have.

It’s all, ahem, ‘Viggo’ for the mo – but one can but hope that a discussion of what is perhaps the best mainstream thriller since Se7en (1995) will not bring too many complaints…

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