Like telling 9-11 jokes on 9-12. DEATH TO 2020 – an uncomfortable mix of bad history and worse comedy. “Bad” not meaning it’s incorrect information, but that the information is not edifying or satisfying. Because we’ve all just died through it – lost our jobs, our lives, our loved ones. As crazy as this sounds to say, watching a documentary … Read More
Misery as Entertainment. When you think about it, practically all movies are “misery as entertainment,” but most have some form of redemption, deliverance, or happy ending to look forward to. AFTERMATH is one of the bleakest slices of life you will ever see: the story of an architect who loses his family in a mid-air collision, due to a distracted … Read More
Diving into a fiction of a fiction. In 1979, Captain America takes time out from saving Americans, to save Ethiopian Jewish refugees in Sudan, under the cover of THE RED SEA DIVING RESORT, a fake resort run by him and his superhero pals, to throw the Sudanese government off their taut-buttocked scent. Chris Evans is Ari Levinson, heading a team … Read More
When They See Us… they still won’t give a fuck. WHEN THEY SEE US is a mini-series dramatization of the 1989 “Central Park Five” case, where five young boys were wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for the rape of a jogger in New York’s Central Park. In 2001, the real rapist confessed, precipitating the release of the Five, and their convictions … Read More
Szpilman’s Liszt. THE PIANIST follows Jewish concert pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman as he hides out from Nazis during the invasion of Poland. It’s not a story about heroes, rather, the story of a Polish man who avoided being one. And lived to play another day. 1939. Wladyslaw “Wladek” Szpilman (Adrien Brody), whom many contend was “the most accomplished pianist in Poland, … Read More
Riches and Redemption on the Cocaine Superhighway. Family’s the most important thing. Don’t do what I did. I put work in front of family. I thought it was more important to be somebody out there, than the failure I was in my own home. I was a terrible father, a terrible husband. I blew my chance. I didn’t deserve forgiveness. … Read More
First Maudlin Man. That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for Mankind. — Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11, June 1969. FIRST MAN is a strange piece of dramatic fiction. Not a biopic; not a historical document. Following Neil Armstrong on his pioneering Apollo 11 Moon landing, instead of a science-driven, or politics-driven docudrama, movie attempts to find an emotional … Read More
Afro-Con Ameri-Klan. All the scientists who worked in and for Germany in the 1930s lived to regret that they directly helped a sociopath like Hitler harm millions of people. Let us not repeat the same mistakes over and over again. ― Piero Scaruffi, software consultant, lecturer, publisher. There’s that CHAPPELLE’S SHOW sketch of the blind black Klansman who didn’t know … Read More
Mind Over Mind. BRAIN ON FIRE recounts a true tale of terror – journalist Susannah Cahalan’s battle against Anti-NMDA-Receptor AutoImmune Encephalitis; when your body’s immune system attacks your brain. What a thing! One might be inclined to say, That’s insane! Doesn’t your brain control your immune system? An attack on the citadel by its own populace! It’s unfortunate that such … Read More
White Lion. Separated from his mother in India at 5 years old, adopted by an Australian couple and raised in Tasmania, Saroo Brierley, 25 years later, tracks down his biological mother in India through the magic of Google Earth. And a privileged white lifestyle. Taking nothing away from the inspiring effort of Saroo and the overwhelming poignancy of his quest, … Read More
A Scene, a Policy, and 9/11. Rudy Giuliani – there’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb and 9/11.” — Joe Biden, Democratic Candidate for President, 2008. In 2008, Joe Biden would aptly describe Rudy Giuliani’s tactics for his presidential candidacy. And this 2003 film, RUDY: THE RUDY GIULIANI STORY, does exactly the same: a … Read More
Fight For Your Right – to Dunkirk! He mobilized the English language, and sent it into battle. — Edward R. Murrow. (Accredited to Lord Halifax in DARKEST HOUR.) Oldman does Churchill! The greatest actor of our generation plays the greatest orator of the greatest generation. DARKEST HOUR follows newly-elected British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman) through Britain’s darkest hour … Read More
Get Rich or Die Lifting. Colors straining against the filmstock like a 2-sizes-too-small t-shirt straining against pectorals, muscles thrumming like rippling duck butter, and planning as meticulous as a grade-schooler trying to get to second base, the whey-protein dramedy PAIN AND GAIN is a flamboyant recounting of a true crime story involving three Florida bodybuilders who kidnap a wealthy restaurant … Read More
Flying Low: Average is the new Achievement. While the real Eddie is a fan of the film, he said that “only about 5%” of EDDIE THE EAGLE is a true story. –BBC News EDDIE THE EAGLE is a tribute to the world’s greatest ski jumper… loser. Oh, so we’re making inspirational movies about losers now? What next, the guy who … Read More
The Race-ist. Isn’t there a punchline that goes, “faster than Jesse Owens at a Klan rally”? And there’s BLAZING SADDLES, when African-American Cleavon Little, discovered hiding under a klansman hood declares, “And now for my next impression: Jesse Owens!” – and runs like the devil. Point being: African-American Olympic sprinter Jesse Owens has entered Western vernacular for his race-ISM, and … Read More
Deep, dark and whitewashed. 33 men trapped in a mine, arguing over food, water, and who gets to negotiate the book deal. THE 33, a dramatization of the Chilean mine disaster of 2010, is a dichotomy of empathy and outrage. The pendulum swings hard both ways; firstly at the outrage of a mining corporation that would think so little of … Read More
Glide to Glory. No one warned us. No one said you are going to lose both engines at a lower altitude than any jet in history… This was dual engine loss at twenty-eight-hundred feet, followed by immediate water landing with 155 souls onboard. No one has ever trained for an incident like that. No one. — Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger. … Read More
Obama batting Smoove. Barack Obama gets to first base! SOUTHSIDE WITH YOU details the birth of Barack Hussein Obama in Kenya, and how his Nazi mother and Black Panther father conspired with the hospital into forging an American birth certificate, so that their son could infiltrate the presidency and destroy the United States with his muslim sharia ways… Okay, now … Read More
An Underprivileged Life Against Cowards With Guns. Unarmed black man shot fatally in the back by cop. It’s not just a movie. It’s reality. Over and over again. This injustice has become so common in United States culture that there is an undeclared war between African-American men (who continue to be black) and cops (who continue to be cowards). FRUITVALE … Read More
Tragedy at the top of the world. Climbing Mount Everest was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life. I wish I’d never gone. I suffered for years of PTSD, and still suffer from what happened. I’m glad I wrote a book about it. But, you know, if I could go back and relive my life, I would never … Read More