Tag Archive
Dragged, Kicking and Screaming to Answer Year-End/Best of 2011 Questions
I am not a fan of year-end lists. They are entirely reductive and self-congratulatory. However the text below was triggered by another critic, Examiner.com’s Jason Roestel, who asked me to contribute to his year-end piece. So this is a version that fixes as many grammatical errors as I originally had, as well as some significant […]
Valhalla Rising
It would make sense that creating a brutal, no-brainer medieval movie, with tons of clanking swords, stabbings, bludgeoning, grunting, and minimal dialogue would be simple and not require either a big budget or a level of acting above say, the Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle Cyborg. You’d be wrong of course; otherwise there would be much […]
How cheap theaters and indifferent audiences are ruining the movies, or how to avoid writing a review of Hellboy II: Golden Army.
Intending to write a full review based on copious notes, I sat in front of the monitor, thinking. Not because of writer’s block, but the realization that the movie had not been given a fair shake. By me, maybe, but certainly by the theater. My experience with the movie was that it was tiring, overplotted, […]
The Sequel Rule
Quite some time ago, I came to the realization that I had not been to a sequel in the theater since Hannibal, a book which I hated, but I was dragged by my ex and a friend who wanted to see it. I thought about why sequels were made and to what kind of movies […]
Outlander
A promisingly silly premise, alien spaceship crashes into the water during the time of Vikings and the survivor tries to win the hearts of the humans who don’t understand him (A more appropriate title might have been Army of Dorkness), is buried in the ground immediately by a concession to the English speaking market. As soon as he lands, removes his protective […]
Leave the Cults to the Scientologists
“Attention Wal-mart shoppers: Pink Flamingos is on sale this week for just $9.99 and if you buy it today, courtesy of our promotions department, at check-out, you’ll receive a complimentary pooper scooper and bib.” In the late winter of 1995, at a low-rent theater on the lower east side of Manhattan, I snuck into a […]
Winner: BEST ONLINE FILM CRITIC, 2010 National Veegie Awards (Vegan Themed Entertainment)
Nominee: BEST NEW PRODUCT, 2011 National Veegie Awards: The Vegan Condom