Paul Haggis often has a way of beating his audience over the head with cultural rhetoric, particularly if we look at Crash as an example. At the same time, a film like Million Dollar Baby – while ostensibly about pugilism and then euthanasia – is actually much more about our cultural obsession with violence, but the hypocrisy […]
The departure from Paul Greengrass’ Bourne series to writer-now-director Tony Gilroy’s is marked and, at times, successful. Whereas the Bournes of Damon were shaky and shot with whirlwind hand-cam cinematography, The Bourne Legacy is slow and meticulous. Like his predecessor, Aaron Cross’s (Jeremy Renner) strikes and punches are amazingly quick, but the rest of the film subdued. […]
More mystical phenomena occur to young boys Timothy Green and Norman. The former is a literal flower child; the latter is a young boy who can talk to dead people, but presumably without the creepily lingering shrink who needs a doctor of his own. If you’re up for killing a few fifths of vodka and blowing $14, […]
While this might be blasphemous to some, I must admit that the original Red Dawn (1984) is lost on me. A précis of the film would be: Soviet forces invade the United States, and the Wolverines, a group of teenagers led by Patrick Swayze fight back against what Ronald Reagan deemed “the evil empire” only a bit […]
Gavin O’Connor’s Warrior looks like the latest entry into the pugilist genre, but its true theme is focused on the sublimation of violence. Admittedly, there are undercurrents of dysfunctional family tropes that ebb and flow throughout the rise of fighters and brothers Tommy (Tom Hardy) and Brendan Conlon (Josh Edgerton). A rift in their teenage years separated […]
This week, we have the fourth installment of an underrated film franchise, a time to place bets on whether of not The Campaign will become more about ticket sales that comedy, and the return of Spike Lee to his directorial roots. The Bourne Legacy: The re-emergence of Jason Bourne reminds me, first, that the Bourne franchise is underrated, […]
Dense and beautifully shot, My Life as Abraham Lincoln is as intentionally confused as is its main character, Cindy (Carolyn Luft), who attempts to navigate the converging juxtapositions of memory, expectations, the vacillating importance of matrimony, and a patriarchal society. For Cindy, her life is comprised of a series of iconographies. Photos of her best friends that […]
Are you ready for another remake? I suppose the real question is whether or not we have a choice. Regardless, Total Recall gets a PG-13 face lift this weekend, so don’t count on catching a flash of the three-breasted alien from Paul Verhoeven’s solid first take on this story. You might also want to prepare for two hours […]
The based-on-a-true-story, Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Film, In Darkness, positions us just there: in the sewers with raw humanity and inhumanity unrelentingly clashing in each scene. On the streets above, the darkness is metaphorical but palpable. Lives are exchanged like currency and sympathy is non-existent. Directed by Agnieszka Holland, this film is set is Lvov, Poland […]
The Watch: Tower Heist has made me wary of Ben Stiller movies, but the recent New Yorker article about his attention to script detail and his desire to make more movies like Greenberg and The Cable Guy make me want to see this. Sure, it’s another alien-invasion film, but at least it wasn’t released during the Great […]