Sunday, April 3, 2022

A Second Look: Paradise Lost


Welcome back for another edition of A Second Look with Jeff Stockton! In this segment I will take a "second look" at a past LRF release with a fresh set of eyes.

On film I've seen mentioned a few times in Sherman's Top 10 articles, but doesn't seem to get much attention elsewhere is Paradise Lost from writer Matt Parker and director Tarsem Singh. An adaptation of John Milton's epic poem of the same name, it tells the story of the angel Lucifer's fall from grace and heaven down to the hell below and his ensuing war against the angels of Heaven. I liked it when I first saw it, but I have to say I have definitely forgotten the story outside of the basic premise since it has been a very long time (Paradise Lost was just the 13th film released by LRF - the studio has released 633 films since).

After re-watching Paradise Lost, I must say that it holds up very well. The plot it fairly simple, but quite interesting from a visual and conceptual stand-point, even for someone who is admittedly not well versed in this sort of lore. Even after all these seasons, this is still one of Matt Parker's best films as a writer - and probably one of the studio's most underrated films. It was released at a time when pitches tended to be much shorter, so I can only imagine how epic it could be with the studio's current format (and Matt Parker's improvement as a writer over the seasons). If you are newer to the studio and have never checked out Paradise Lost, I highly recommend it after taking a second look.

Original Grade: B+

New Grade: A-

Paradise Lost Link:
https://lrfdatabase.weebly.com/paradise-lost.html



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