Tag Archive
Skatetown, U.S.A.
Categorizing a movie as a time capsule reduces it to a simple evocation of a specific time and nothing else. William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. is drenched in 1985, a Wang Chung score, rampant androgyny, ridiculous car chases, cheerful amorality, and a cynical fetishism that seems modeled on Miami Vice, which debuted […]
Re-boot to the Head
Bigger. Louder. Faster. These adjectives are the most deceptive in all of advertising, because they are almost as meaningless with context as without. The idea behind a “reboot” is to personify those three tantalizing words. In the case of the re-imagining of Star Trek, you’re being sold a brand name and nothing else. This new […]
The Cosbys Are Aliens
In 1984, America was introduced to what was then a mystery to them, a happy and extremely wealthy black family on The Cosby Show. This was particularly bewildering to white people, who had been trained to believe that black people were rarely doctors or lawyers, and here was one family who had both, as well […]
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Has such a great idea that it totally throws away. There is an hour and twenty minutes of padding and lame comedy bits (Scotty doing slapstick? A 57 year old Uhura doing a naked dance? Spock singing “Row, row, row your boat”?) before they get to the meat, traveling across the universe to find God. […]
House of the Dead
“You created these things to become immortal!!! Why?” “To live forever!!” “They were Spanish. From Spain.” It’s indicative of this dialogue that all of House of the Dead is pretty redundant. From the need to name the captain of a boat Kirk, so you can make jokes about it, to actually repeating the same song […]