Apatow’s Magnum Scrotus. High comedy, intense drama, and lots and lots of dick jokes. FUNNY PEOPLE is the best movie Adam Sandler has ever made. Because it’s a Judd Apatow movie. In it, he offers us his vulnerable “human” character (as he did in SPANGLISH, REIGN OVER ME), not his insufferable, jutting-jawed imbecile (BILLY MADISON, THE WATERBOY), or his “pretend … Read More
STATE OF PLAY
ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN meets Blackwater. Politics, conspiracy, murder – is the STATE OF PLAY. And Rachel McAdams looking tastier than Christmas dinner. A murdered congressional aide is linked to Republican Congressman, Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck, playing it straighter than Tom Cruise’s public persona) in a sex scandal that leads to questions regarding his links to a no-bid, war-profiteering contractor, … Read More
THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT 2009
Ingmar Bergman is spinning in the last grave on the left… What pisses me off about THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT is that nowhere do the filmmakers mention – not in advertising, not in screen credits and not even in the Special Features on the DVD – that this movie is ripped straight from Ingmar Bergman’s THE VIRGIN SPRING … Read More
THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT
So silly it’s scary. THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT is advertised as “the most terrifying movie ever made.” It is. If you’re five. A family moves into a haunted house in Connecticut. Stupid things happen. The End. Okay, okay, so you want some evidence… Right outa the gate: “Based On True Events.” This phrase has become as meaningless as “whiter whites” … Read More
DEFIANCE
In defiance of stereotypes. In the movie KNOCKED UP, five Jewish friends trying to score in a night club talk about the credibility of Jews being raised by one man: “If any of us is gonna score tonight, it’s because of Eric Bana in MUNICH.” Soon they’ll be talking the same way about Daniel Craig in DEFIANCE… 1941: during World … Read More
DISTRICT 9
A Closer Encounter. Cry about the simple hell people give other people–without even thinking. Cry about the hell white people give colored folks, without even stopping to think that they’re people too. — Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird. It lacks the epic majesty of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, the wonderment of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, the cloying fear of ALIEN, the … Read More
BRUNO
Social Commentary with a Depilated Sphincter. Not for the faint-hearted or the weak-minded, but definitely for the limp-wristed and the ball-shaven, BRÜNO drags us like fag hags through the darkest recesses of the human psyche. Exactly like BORAT, only gayer. Like a freight train thundering on homosexually steel wheels, tapping a pygmy lover with a penchant for champagne bottles up … Read More
THE HURT LOCKER
Heroic Movie about a Non-Heroic War. Baghdad, 2004. THE HURT LOCKER opens with a quote from journalist Chris Hedges: “…war is a drug.” Apparently, a drug not only to its combatants, but on the populace fooled by its “glamour” and on directors who fuel that glamour. Kathryn Bigelow directs this one-note movie – supposedly a horrifying closeup of a bomb … Read More
THE INTERNATIONAL
Resistance is Futile. When one of the world’s largest international banks is discovered brokering covert arms deals with China and the Middle East… well, who’s really surprised these days? In THE INTERNATIONAL, it seems everyone is. Louis Salinger (perpetually unshaven Clive Owen) and Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts, sporting the most atrocious American accent since Gerard Depardieu) are international police who … Read More
STAR TREK 2009
All-New, All-Improved, Same-ole Same ole. If this don’t keep the fanboys happy, nothin’ will.How do you approach a movie as sodden in mythos as the STAR TREK franchise? The approach must be as trepidatious for film makers as it is for geekboys and weekend viewers alike. Every inch of a production under the STAR TREK aegis would reek of esoterica … Read More
NOT EASILY BROKEN
Preachy, Peachy and Screechy. Directed by the great Bill Duke (the big black guy from PREDATOR), NOT EASILY BROKEN is tailored for the black christian market like a black suit and tie is tailored for a Reservoir Dog. Dave Johnson (Morris Chestnut) is married to a screeching harridan (Taraji P. Henson), who seems to possess no redeeming qualities except two … Read More
THE READER
Bedtime for Hitler. Post-Nazi West Germany. A young boy vomits on the street in a rainstorm, in Neustadt, 1958. An older woman helps him. What follows? Full frontal sex, sex and much more sex. In between reading, reading and much more reading. Well, the movie is called THE READER, a heavy-handed, manipulative “romance” tale that will tear-jerk those who are inclined … Read More
TAKEN
TAKEN for a thrill-ride. Liam Neeson has always stood up for what’s right (as Oskar Schindler, as Rob Roy, Michael Collins, hell, even as Qui-Gon Jinn) – but he’s never been so BADASS about it. In the European production, TAKEN, Neeson is Bryan Mills, an ex-CIA operative – he calls himself a “Preventer of Bad Things” with “a very particular … Read More
WATCHMEN
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! And the fanboys whine like bitches. The “unfilmable” graphic novel, WATCHMEN – has been filmed! Cry the beloved comicbook and let slip the dogs of nihilism. WATCHMEN is epic and sexy and bloody; sensual and visceral and brutal; more than a comicbook, more than a messianic cry of madness; flamboyant costumed heroes, … Read More
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
Hip to be Slumdog. I’m gonna get skewered for this – but only if you are not aware of the land of my forecumbers. Just as black people are the only ones allowed to call each other N-Words, my cucumber patch being originally from Madras earns me the right to satire paka Indian-English and get away with it. He’s not … Read More
CORALINE
Alice in Wonderland meets Alice Cooper. This movie scared the pants off me. Which in turn, scared young children and women with small hips, as I walked out of the theater, pantless. With CORALINE, the MPAA once again proves how little grasp it has in correlating asinine Ratings to actual content. Even as I entered this PG-13 “3D stop-motion” animated … Read More
THE WRESTLER
Emotional Pounding. Well I’m frustrated, outdated, I really wanna be over-rated. I’m a finder and I’m a keeper; I’m not a loser and I ain’t no weeper. I got the boys to make a noise Won’t ever let up – Hope it annoys you! Join the pack, feel the crack! Well now you’re here – There’s no way back! — … Read More