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Showing posts from February, 2012

Underappreciated masterpiece

I recently watched Brian DePalma's Carrie again and dug out an old review I wrote of it way back in the 80s. I thought that I might have been looking back with rose-tinted specs but, to my pleasant surprise, I was as impressed with the film as I ever was. It's certainly "of its time", as the fashions and attitudes take us firmly back to 1976 - but that doesn't seem to hurt it at all and, in my opinion, it holds up vastly better than most other films of the same vintage, and better than any of DePalma's other films. I've left the following (naive as it is) largely unchanged from when I first wrote it in 1987. In passing I dared to criticise the sacred Stanley Kubrick, and my opinion of his Stephen King adaptation is unchanged. Warning: it does contain spoilers. They’re all gonna laugh at you Brian DePalma’s Carrie examined by John H An ugly duckling schoolgirl assailed by the jeers of her schoolmates and the cruel repression of her religious maniac