In Which Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster Leaves Me Begging For Mercy
Sometimes a movie begins, and within ten seconds you hate it, and try as you might to step back, to go with the flow, to give it another chance, nothing […]
Category Archives: Active Observation
The Bed-Sitting Room Is A Very Odd Film
Surely we’ve all had times in our lives when we’ve feared suddenly turning into a wardrobe or a foyer or a driveway or a blender or what have you. It […]
Hollywood Experiences A Hijacking
The new Danish film, A Hijacking (Kapringen), which I watched last night, seems like the mirror image of the upcoming Paul Greengrass / Tom Hanks film Captain Phillips. In the expensive Hollywood […]
Zapata Está Muerto; Viva Zapata!
Starring Marlon Brandon. Directed by Elia Kazan. A story of an aspiring hero overcoming his corrupted brother to lead his community to freedom from tyranny. I speak, of course, of Viva […]
Cinema Verité and the Reality Infection
It pains me to admit it, but I enjoy watching reality television. The Bachelor has long been a source of fascination for me, and when I have an extra hour […]
Old-Timey Sci-Fi Craziness: H.G. Wells’ Things To Come
So much time, so few movies. Wait. Reverse that. Watching H.G. Wells’ Things To Come for the first time, I wondered how I’d gone so long without seeing it. It’s […]
The Act of Killing is Easy
Killing is not a difficult act to accomplish. There are countless ways to get the job done. Be they bloody or tidy, quick or prolonged, sadistic or unfeeling—most murders are […]
5 Fun Facts About Elysium
In a fabricated future world like Elysium‘s, making up facts and defending their veracity without a drop of supporting data is perfectly acceptable. That’s a fact. It’s also a fact that […]
Worst Double Feature Ever: The Canyons And Elysium
With my brain addled and befuzzed by a vague illness on Friday, I allowed myself to see, within a few scant hours of one another, the newly released movies Elysium […]
Supercalifragilisticexpialidociously Strange: Watching Mary Poppins as an Adult
I never saw Mary Poppins as a kid. Yep, this Oscar-winning, smash-hit, family favorite completely passed me by. So, with Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks due in December — a film about the […]
The World’s End is the Wright Stuff
After seeing The World’s End — the final installment in Edgar Wright’s Three Flavours: Cornetto trilogy — and mulling it over for a healthy chunk of time, there are two things I […]
My Allergic Reaction To Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine
Woody Allen has finally become his own parody. His characters could exist nowhere but in the movies. His idea of San Francisco is laughable.
Superman & Batman vs. Snyder
Comic-Con had its collective head explode yesterday when director Zack Snyder announced that he was set to direct a Superman vs Batman film loosely based on Frank Miller’s The Dark […]
Lookin’ to Get Out: What Hal Ashby Left Behind
Hal Ashby was an immense, intuitive talent who drew indelible lines across the throat of our culture. He’s one of my favorite directors, but his career was brief. He left […]