Similar to last year’s Restrepo, this year’s Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary, Hell and Back Again, looks at the trials and tribulation within the U.S. conflict in Afghanistan, centering, for the most part, on the rhetoric of our politicking. Various commanders sit down with Afghan elders and explain that “we’ll pay for [the damage we’ve created],” […]
I suppose the above graphic would have been a better inclusion when discussing One for the Money last week. (It’s currently coasting at a steady 3% on Rottentomatoes, which, admittedly, isn’t as bad as Bucky Larson, but certainly just as good as Abduction.) As February begins, we are greeted by a sentimental fight against the Soviets — sort of […]
Making a movie about survival is tricky insomuch as, generally speaking, the writer, director, and cast have little frame of reference from which to draw the logical course of action for dealing with a pack of hungry wolves in the Alaskan wilderness. Perhaps our repeat viewings of Man vs. Wild suggest a rudimentary knowledge for survival, but […]
Man on a Ledge might be the most literal-titled, cliche-riddled movie anyone will see this year, but amid the sea of tropes and trash, there are clever moments, which makes it difficult to cheer for Nick Cassidy’s demise, but not impossible. During his visit to the Roosevelt Hotel, Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) checks in under a pseudonym, […]
As of this past weekend, Liam Neeson’s string of box office successes is still in tact as The Grey comes in on top with about twenty million dollars in ticket sales. This pales a bit in comparison to his recent early-year windfalls with Taken and Unknown, but it’s still a testamnent to how much people dig Liam Neeson, […]
The biggest question this week will be whether or not Liam Neeson can continue his string of success with early-year movies. For some reason, Unknown and Taken both drew massive audiences. While neither was critically successful, people just love them some Liam Neeson. How could you not? He was Oskar Schindler; he and Gandhi single-handedly defeated the Nazis […]
Back when news leaked out of Pennsylvania’s Happy Valley that an assistant college football coach had been accused of raping/abusing a number of prepubescent boys, the world began to re-imagine the mythology of Joe Paterno. Surely he was not responsible for such an atrocity, some said. What a hypocrite, others cried. And then there were those […]
Of the nine Academy Award nominees for Best Picture this year, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was a shocking addition. At the same time, if there were ever an award for The Most Appropriately Titled Movie, this would certainly be it, for Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) is extremely loud and ever-so-close for far too much of the […]
In We Need to Talk About Kevin, Eva Khatchadourian is a veritable Lady Macbeth from the opening scene that finds a youthful Eva in an orgiastic frenzy of bodies writhing in eviscerated tomatoes to the painstaking, hand-held-razorblade scraping of red paint that has vandalized her home and refuses to leave her car, despite the squeaky effort of […]
From the cuts between time differentiated by the presence of bruises and broken bones, to the seamless transitions from black and white shootouts to crimson-tinted, slow-motion shots of the prelude and aftermath of carnage, Haywire is vintage Soderbergh – perhaps most in its minimalistic qualities. There are plenty of aesthetic touches and attention paid to detail, whether it […]