Upstream Color

Posted in movies by - Jun 04, 2013
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Upstream Color

I don’t know what to say about this movie.

It’s not that I’m afraid to spoil it, mind you. Upstream Color is unspoilable. I could tell you every single thing that happens and you would still need to see the movie just to get to the level of confusion I’m on.

Upstream Color is one of those Terence Malick-style cinematic tone poems, and if you’re not a fan of that style of filmmaking, you’ll quickly find yourself gasping for air. It includes twee, indulgent lines like this:

“I have to apologize. I was born with a disfigurement where my head is made …

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Evil Dead

Posted in movies by - Apr 05, 2013
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Evil Dead

I guess this is the first ‘Cabin in the Woods’ style horror flick I’ve watched since joss whedon so thoroughly deconstructed the genre last year. His ‘Cabin in the Woods’ did such a number on the tired tropes of the platform that I wondered if there was any point in making another one. Like, ever.

This sideways reboot of the class Raimi ‘Evil Dead’ franchise does not attempt to answer that question. Instead, the film proceeds blithely along as if nothing changed anywhere.

The truth is, there is something primal about movies about ignorant kids, cut off from all help, surrounded by …

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Review – Obama’s America 2016

Posted in movies by - Mar 27, 2013
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Review – Obama’s America 2016

If Dinesh D’Souza is right, President Obama’s second term will be devoted to the destruction of America. Dinesh D’Souza isn’t right, of course. Dinesh D’Souza is almost never right. He is fortunate enough to live in a country where pundits don’t lose their jobs when nothing they predict comes true, so long as what they have to say is shocking enough to hold pensioners through the commercial breaks. He can be found often bloviating in the same chairs as Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter. He writes the same kind of books, and he has the same sort of things to …

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Movie 43

Posted in movies by - Mar 26, 2013
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Movie 43

Movie 43 is essentially a festival of short films. Unfortunately for the strangely game cast of stars assembled, it is a festival of shitty short films. Hugh Jackman, for example, plays an extremely eligible bachelor who inexplicably has testicles swaying from his throat.

Neck balls. It’s that kind of party. Not worth inconveniencing the electrons needed to tell you about it.

I don’t know how this hot garbage got greenlit, but you would do well to spend the time doing literally anything else.

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Zero Dark Thirty

Posted in movies by - Feb 03, 2013
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Zero Dark Thirty

ZD30 isn’t really one film. It’s at least three films, operating at cross-purposes.

The first film is the controversial, allegedly unflinching look at the use of torture in the war on terror. This film failed for me, mostly because of all the flinching. We are shown water boarding, and stress positions, and physical attacks on a chained prisoner. For their part, they are uncomfortable. The prisoner in question soils himself, and is left to marinate in it. We are meant to see it through the eyes of Jessica Chastain’s character Maya, eyes that at first appear conflicted about the interrogation …

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Django Unchained

Posted in movies by - Jan 30, 2013
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Django Unchained

Before the review, a pronouncement. Christoph Waltz must be in all movies henceforth. He is that delightful onscreen. I will not be happy until he is as ubiquitous as Jessica Chastain.

Quentin Tarantino is by now a fairly known quantity. He has made a passel of highly stylized, highly verbal and profoundly violent genre-busters that you more than likely have an opinion about by now. Fair warning: I love them. I love operatic violence, provocative patter and endless references to other films. I inhabit the dorky bullseye of QT’s demographic, and I won’t pretend that I’m not kind of a fanboy.

So, …

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Red Dawn

Posted in movies by - Dec 10, 2012
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Red Dawn

The original ‘Red Dawn’ is quintessential ‘good garbage’. It’s fun, it’s ridiculous, and it leaves your mind as gently as it entered. Immediately.

The new ‘Red Dawn’ is a lesser film on almost every count, and being less than an 80’s Swayze/Sheen vehicle is saying something.

The plot hasn’t changed much, and those few changes are to the film’s detriment. America is under siege. In the 80s it was the USSR (natch) and Cuba (?!), but in 2012 it’s somehow mostly North Korea and Russia. Rumors abound that the imaginary enemy was supposed to be China and the suits got cold …

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The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Posted in movies by - Dec 10, 2012
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The Perks of Being a Wallflower

It makes sense, I guess. There really is an opening for the sort of teen comedy that John Hughes used to make – the kind where the loneliness and bewilderment of adolescence are acknowledged, and the teenagers involved aren’t leered at or treated like idiots.

It’s not ’16 Candles’ or anything, but ‘Perks’ is a serviceable facsimile. The performances are generally winning, and the melodrama doesn’t wear out its welcome until late in the third act. The script is a bit ham-fisted, but it’s a teen dramedy and that’s to be expected. When one of the characters acknowledges this fact …

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Alex Cross

Posted in movies by - Oct 25, 2012
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Alex Cross

Apparently Tyler Perry has decided to become an action star. This is a terrible idea, for many reasons, but Perry’s faithful audience is too tempting a demographic target for the studios to tell him no.

But Perry’s audience is used to flocking to see him wear a granny dress, or to watch polished romantic trifles with Morris Chestnutt and Sanaa Lathan and the like. It’s an open question whether the Perristas will have any interest in following him to the land of gunfire and slow-motion breaking glass.

I’ll say this for the man. He’s game. The effort is palpable. It’s unfortunate, but …

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Frankenweenie

Posted in movies by - Oct 10, 2012
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Frankenweenie

This is a remake of sorts – it’s a big-budget, feature-length reimagining of a short Tim Burton made 28 years ago. The plot, such as it is, concerns a withdrawn, spooky boy named Victor who has trouble making friends. He spends most of his time alone in the attic making monster movies with his dog Sparky. When Sparky dies, the unconsolable young man decides to disinter the pup and attempt to bring him back to life with electricity, a force he clearly does not understand.

The plan works, and the faithful Sparky returns, battered but undimmed in spirit.

Of course, …

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