Naturally it all begins with a secret government experiment gone horribly wrong. Or right, depending on your point of view. In a secret government facility conveniently located in the middle of field and under a rock, the military developed Item 9. Weed so strong that it was not only declared illegal, the facility was ordered… Read More »
BURN AFTER READING
It is a suitably perverse twist that the only person who has the clearest idea of what’s she is doing in the Coen Brothers latest offering, BURN AFTER READING, is Linda Litzke, the inadvertent femme fatale of the piece played by the miraculous Frances McDormand. Not the CIA operatives, not the Treasury Department guy, not… Read More »
THE IDES OF MARCH
THE IDES OF MARCH is a suitably Machiavellian portrait of how politics works. Not in the bastardized sense of ruthlessness for ruthlessness sake, but rather in the classical Machiavellian sense, ruthlessness to manage any given situation in order to achieve ones goals while making as little fuss with the population at large as possible. In… Read More »
BROKEN CITY
There is a scene in BROKEN CITY that serves as the perfect metaphor for the entire film. In it, corrupt New York Mayor Hostetler (Russell Crowe), and Billy Taggert (Mark Wahlberg), an ex-cop, are having an informal meeting to discuss the former hiring the latter to tail his wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones), whom he suspects of… Read More »
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY — THE MARKED ONES
And once again we return to the trough of a formerly terrific franchise in order to drain the dregs and make those last few bucks before the well finally runs completely dry. I speak of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES, the fifth installment of the series, and the one that connects to the original in… Read More »
NEIGHBORS
It has been said that some of our contemporary malaise stems from the fact that we have, as a culture, lost the traditional markers to separate childhood from adulthood. The bar- or bat-mitzvah is not the assumption of adult responsibility so much as a party. The confirmation is a new set of clothes and spiritual… Read More »
BAD SANTA
In BAD SANTA, a film produced by the Coen Brothers and based on their original story, we have a holiday story for our times. One that dares to show us without pulling any punches the nightmare that all this enforced good cheer has become, that exposes the seamy underbelly of what the season has devolved… Read More »
TWO FOR THE MONEY
The human mind is an amazing thing. Over the course of evolution, it has developed a host of fascinating mechanisms geared towards its survival in any number of harsh environments, be it the plains of Africa a million years ago, or the terrors of bad cinema at today’s local multiplex. It’s the latter that stirred… Read More »
JARHEAD
The history of the military film has had several notable eras, from the melancholy of THE BIG PARADE (featuring the divine John Gilbert in arguably his best role) from the post WWI, silent era, to the jingoistic excesses during and just after WWII with such offerings as an iconic John Wayne THE FLYING LEATHERNECKS, followed… Read More »