Tag Archive
The Tree of Life
Is there a significant difference between getting your money’s worth and getting too much? In terms of moviegoing, there’s two ways of dealing with that thought; Since you’ve paid, you have to get as much as you can out of the experience. Or, since you’ve paid, it’s your time and your money, and torturing yourself […]
Youth in Revolt
Exploring the sexuality of teenagers is, for some fuzzy moralistic reason, a faux pas. We can acknowledge as a society that young boys and girls have sexual thoughts, and once they pass puberty, those thoughts dominate their lives, even if they don’t know how to deal with them. Teenage sexual desire is a universal feeling, […]
Jennifer’s Body
Do you ever wonder if actors take advice from characters in their films in real life? Like perhaps Bruce Willis deciding that after Die Hard he would no longer walk around barefoot for any reason, you know, just in case terrorists shot up his house and he had to run around and avoid all the […]
The White Man’s Here. Who Needs Some Assimilation?
When Gran Torino comes out on DVD in June, you all owe it to yourselves to see it (if you haven’t already). Not because it’s a great movie, but rather because it’s made from a perspective so antiquated that it’s no surprise that it was Clint Eastwood’s biggest hit in years. Granted, Clint is old […]
Surrealism vs. Masturbation
Robert Altman’s 3 Women is a movie often praised for its fascinating characters and trips into the surreal. Criterion clearly thought so and put in a great effort on the disc, the picture transfer is impeccable. This was also during Altman’s salad days (though Pauline Kael, a big Altman booster, always noted how he was […]
Mystic River
From the television ads, Mystic River looked like your typical middlebrow Oscar movie, on a generic B movie subject but told in hushed tones with A list actors, which apparently covers up the generica (see In the Bedroom). I had just seen Sleepers the week before, another star studded, contrived, overrated, awards conscious drama about […]