And Darwin said, “Let there be light!” And there was light. When a library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn’t anger me. – Mark Twain, Feb 1907. The battle between Good (intelligence) and Evil … Read More
IT’S COMPLICATED
Glengarry Glen Ruse. Writer-director Nancy Meyers discovers in her late 50s what all men realize in their early 20s – that you can ALWAYS go back to previous panty. And it’s not wrong or right or immoral or unethical. As long as you do it behind everyone’s back. Alec Baldwin shows us how to Always Be Closing in IT’S COMPLICATED, … Read More
THE ROAD
A Tale of No Cities. In a post-holocaust world, a father and son fend for survival, staying on the move for food, shelter, and the endless quest for a MAD MAX Trilogy Boxed Set. “In a moment the world changed forever.” More of an exposition than a slogan. It gets us on THE ROAD without having to explain why. We … Read More
THE FOURTH KIND
Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: Idiocy. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. — Carl Sagan. Someone’s been reading Whitley Strieber’s Communion. And believing it. There are two kinds of hoaxes. The First Kind catches the public off guard with its ersatz authenticity (Piltdown Man, Orson Welles’s broadcast of War Of The Worlds, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT); the Second Kind requires … Read More
ASTRO BOY 2009
When the cute robots take over the skyways… The points in his hair are as iconic as Mickey Mouse’s ears; they exist in their own reality, where they are always seen, no matter the angle of his head! It’s ASTRO BOY, Osamu Tezuka’s manga creation from the 1950s. Cartooned in the 1960s in Japan, then re-cartooned in the ’80s (remember … Read More
BROTHERS
Broham Interruptus. Don’t you just hate it when your brother goes off to war and he supposedly gets killed, and you start putting the moves on his wife, and then he comes back? Don’t you just hate that?! What separates Jim Sheridan‘s BROTHERS from Michael Bay’s PEARL HARBOR (same plot, different war) is that BROTHERS is watchable. Starring Tobey Maguire … Read More
SHERLOCK HOLMES 2009
The Adventure of the Hero’s Rebirth. Guy Ritchie’s SHERLOCK HOLMES is not quite a reimagining of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s infamous British detective; more like a punch in the face. An analytical punch in the face. I’ll admit I’m not a Sherlock Holmes aficionado. Matter of fact, of the lifetime of books I’ve devoured like a balrog (and sometimes like … Read More
CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY
Too Big To Nail. Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the streets. Corruption is why we win. — Bob Baer’s SYRIANA (2005). It’s not just about Too Big To Fail – it’s about betting on failing. … Read More
PARANORMAL ENTITY
Paranormal En-titty. I watched PARANORMAL ENTITY at night and I was not able to sleep afterwards. I was laughing that hard. A guy walks around his badly set-dressed house with a Point of View camera for ten nights, recording evidence of the titular paranormal entity haunting him and his bland mother and big-breasted sister. Boring has a new middle name. … Read More
ORPHAN
The Kid Ain’t Kidding. Kids are scary to begin with. Little adults with big heads who pretend they don’t know what we’re saying. They’re like clowns: some people find them fun; most know they’re evil. So in ORPHAN, when an upscale couple with two children adopt a 9-year-old orphan with scary theme music, familial bliss is not in the flow … Read More
OBSESSED
Hell hath no apathy, like a woman scorned. A married man’s secretary comes between him and his wife. Well, she doesn’t really come between them, so much as try to seduce him with small talk and dirty martinis, get almost naked in front of him, almost have sex with him in a toilet stall and gives him a Crudo CD. … Read More
BIG FAN
Drama is Easy, Comedy is Hard. I was not a fan of Patton Oswalt as a comedian. It took his remarkable dramatic performance in this movie to make me take a second look at his comedy. Now, I’m a big fan… (Is that good or bad?…) Oswalt plays Paul Aufiero, the eponymous BIG FAN of the New York Giants, whose … Read More
17 AGAIN
Teens and geeks and MILFs. Oh my! I’ve just gone teen-gay for Zac Efron! Before they send the teen-gay patrol to check my temperature with an anal thermometer, I have to add that 17 AGAIN (starring Efron) is a very stupid movie; not deliberately stupid like ACE VENTURA or BALLS OF FURY, but unwatchably stupid, like MONSTER-IN-LAW or GHOSTS OF … Read More
WILL FERRELL: YOU’RE WELCOME AMERICA – A FINAL NIGHT WITH GEORGE W BUSH
Mission Unaccomplished. He’s mad, bad and dangerous to know, and the 43rd president of the United States is made to look even stupider than usual in Will Ferrell’s one man show, YOU’RE WELCOME AMERICA – A FINAL NIGHT WITH GEORGE W. BUSH. Will Ferrell has played W. since his days on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE (a high point being adding the … Read More
EXTRACT
Factory Space. Mike Judge (OFFICE SPACE, 1999) writes and directs this amusing little tale of Joel (Jason Bateman), owner of an extract factory, who is so dissatisfied with his non-existent wife-sex, he conspires to force her into an affair so that he himself can have a guilt-free affair with one of his hot new interns. To his chagrin, his plan … Read More
LAND OF THE LOST 2009
Bland of the Lost. I’ve pretty much had it waiting for Will Ferrell to make another funny movie. The last one was ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY (2004), although I admit I have not seen his TV special, YOU’RE WELCOME AMERICA: A FINAL NIGHT WITH GEORGE W. BUSH (I’ve always liked his Dubya). LAND OF THE LOST, a movie … Read More
UP IN THE AIR
Loner Class. UP IN THE AIR is that rare chick-centric movie that doesn’t make me want to vomit or slap someone. It is a story about love, but it’s not a Love Story; it’s a movie about romance, but it’s not a Romantic Movie; it takes us on a bucking and diving flight across the landscape of human emotions and … Read More
THE GOODS: LIVE HARD, SELL HARD
Abused Cars. I have hair on my balls. And I sell cars. The end. — Don “The Goods” Ready. Slick, smarmy and sweaty-balled, THE GOODS is the bastard child of USED CARS and GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS. Don “The Goods” Ready (Jeremy Piven) is a freelance super-salesman (his business card simply says, “Don Ready. I move cars, Motherfucker”) who is called … Read More
THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE
Going and coming across time. Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time… He has seen his birth and death many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the events in between… he has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren’t necessarily fun. — Kurt Vonnegut, “Slaughterhouse-Five.” Everything we learned from Michael J. Fox … Read More
MOON
Space Oddity. In 1969, two years before director Duncan Jones was born, David Bowie released the single, Space Oddity. 40 years later, Bowie’s son, Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones releases his own space oddity – the brilliant MOON, an intelligent, thoughtful, unsettling, dialogue-driven drama and the first true science fiction movie in a light year. “Commencing countdown, engines on…” This isn’t … Read More