Since the first time I viewed it as an eight year old (around 1989), The Bad News Bears was something of a pedestrian, underdog baseball tale – something that was reinforced by the crass, raunchier 2005 remake substituting Billy Bob Thornton for Walter Matthau as the antihero Morris Buttermaker. However, the original (and, I suppose its successor) […]
The incisor that slowly falls from the hockey player’s mouth, just after his blood forms Pollack-like droplets on the ice, casts Goon as a film that celebrates controlled violence. Puccini’s “Diecimile anni al nostro Imperatore” accompanies this scene, as do cheers from the crowd and smiles on the face of the enforcer who protected his team’s marquee […]