One Sentence about … Shane

Shane (George Stevens, 1953) contains some magnificently off-kilter action scenes, fast-cut punch-up montages such as the sequence where Alan Ladd and Van Helflin brawl in a farmyard of panicking animals, and the mountains of Wyoming look incredible, but day by day, it gets harder for me to watch the long, slow build-up towards heroic, retributive and cathartic gun violence.

One Sentence about … Wet Hot American Summer

Though it is intermittently very funny, and has a retroactively all-star comic cast, the tone of Wet Hot American Summer lurches widely between excessive spoof and affectionate pastiche, but it can’t even manage to skewer the soft-target satirical punching bag of 1980s teen movies, so ultimately, this is the kind of movie you make when you’re not talented or interested enough to make Dazed and Confused.