Motor City Mad Man. The David versus Goliath story – with David wielding an Intermittent Windshield Wiper. Antonio Meucci, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Alfred Russell Wallace – all these men had their ideas stolen, only credited years, decades after their ideas had entered the fabric of society under other mens’ names: the telephone, Superman, evolution… Who knows how many … Read More
MILK
Got Rights? Life really did begin at 40 for Harvey Milk. Unfortunately, it ended at 48. MILK follows the short, comet-across-the-skies career of Harvey Milk (Sean Penn), the first gay official elected to public office in the Close-minded United Hypocrite States of America. We meet Milk in the waning hours of his 39th birthday, picking up a stranger (James Franco … Read More
OPEN WATER
Body of Beauty in Body of Water. Based on a true incident, OPEN WATER tells the speculative tale of two deep-sea divers accidentally abandoned by their diving party in Caribbean open water. Daniel (Daniel Travis) and Susan (Blanchard Ryan – one of the most beautiful actresses of our day) are the divers, on a tropical getaway to patch up marital … Read More
THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD
The Shooting of an Olde Worlde Epic by a New World Filmmaker. This classical western draws us into 1800s Americana so richly that we feel our teeth rotting from lack of dentistry not invented yet. Written and directed by Andrew Dominik (from a book by Ron Hansen), THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD is a study … Read More
FROST/NIXON
and the Truth shall set you bleed… Peace/War. Life/Death. Truth/Lies. Frost/Nixon. Based on Peter Morgan’s stage play of the same name, from the stunning real life interviews that ex-president Richard M. Nixon granted British television host, David Frost in 1977, Ron Howard‘s compelling FROST/NIXON does what Oliver Stone’s milky W. never could – it gets the job done.What job is … Read More
THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT
History rewritten. And rewritten. And rewritten… We’ll never know The Truth about 9/11. And this shoddy movie proves it. I recently watched a YouTube report claiming there were no planes involved in the Twin Towers’ destruction; that all the news programs were supposedly provided with same-angle shots of the Towers from a mysterious source (probably the gubmint?), and in that … Read More
REDACTED
Hell on Earth, overlorded by Satan Bush. Iraq calls America The Great Satan. REDACTED shows us why. Written and directed by Brian de Palma, we follow a small cadre of American troops for a few explosive havoc days of rape and murder in Samara, Iraq. Based on a real account of the rape and murder of a 15-year-old Samara girl, … Read More
CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR
Owned By His Own War. Before George H.W. Bush sold weapons to Saddam, before Ronald Reagan sold weapons to Iran, before George W. Bush lost 190,000 guns in Iraq – there was Tom Hanks, selling weapons to the Mujahedeen. A splinter group of the Mujahedeen would later become the Taliban. Thanks again, American Politicians. In the Mike Nichols-directed political intriguer, … Read More
RECOUNT
Stealing the World with Hanging Chad. Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything. – Josef Stalin. RECOUNT is another nail in the “democracy” coffin. Even for those who detest politics, this movie unfolds like a thriller rather than a dusty legal doc. Surely no one in Amerika believes the lie of “One Man One Vote”? … Read More
BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE
Bury the Truth of Wounded Knee. I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass. Bury my heart at Wounded Knee. — Stephen Vincent Benét, “American Names.” The Wounded Knee Massacre (aka The Battle at Wounded Knee Creek) was the last major armed conflict of what americans term the “Indian Wars” of the late nineteenth century. BURY MY HEART … Read More
BREACH
Scapegoat for a far more evil government. The tagline of BREACH squeals: “Inspired by the true story of the greatest security breach in U.S. history.” I find that hard to believe. For many reasons, the most compelling being the current Amerikan political environment: by 2007, the United States was staggering, knees buckling under the killing burden of a patently criminal … Read More
AMERICAN GANGSTER
Smooth Criminal. Whadaya know – Crime DOES pay! Or so it seems at the conclusion of AMERICAN GANGSTER, when a career gangster and a struggling cop are laffing it up in a montage, collaborating to bring down the gangster’s empire. Now why would they be doing that? I’ll get to that subtle mismanaged message in a moment. Hmm, a movie … Read More
GALLIPOLI
Military Unintelligence. Peter Weir’s stirring anti-war epic, GALLIPOLI, has a heart as large as Western Australia, a sweep as wide as its blue-chiseled skies and – Mel Gibson’s naked 24-year-old bottom. GALLIPOLI is not about Gallipoli. The botched Australian and New Zealand Armed Corp (ANZAC) landing at that Turkish beach in 1915 is merely the backdrop to Weir’s wondrous character … Read More
THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND
While watching this movie, comparison between the mad past President of Uganda and the mad current President of America becomes unavoidable. This review somehow skews into that of full-blooded political rant somewhere east of crazy town, where Cheney and Rice enjoy peaceful Middle Eastern town strolls with John McCain in Kevlar vests. Apologies. – Poffy the Cucumber. Acid Reign. No … Read More
THE HOAX
The Barbaric Yawp of the Lunatic Fringe. In 1970, author Clifford Irving fooled all of the people some of the time when he produced the autobiography of one of the world’s most intriguing recluses, Howard Hughes. Like all great hoaxes, it eventually served him better than the truth. And like all movies “based on true stories,” we approach cautiously where … Read More
INVINCIBLE
Vince-ible. …really wasn’t all that good a movie – but he looked hot in it. — my female friend. Pretty much sums up the Mark Wahlberg vehicle, INVINCIBLE. Written like a Runaway Cliché by Brad Gann and directed well by Ericson Core, INVINCIBLE is the usual “Inspired by a True Story” film that is itself geared to inspire. Grimace. Though … Read More
CAPOTE
The movie about the book about the murders. CAPOTE, first of all, is not a biopic. It covers a short period in writer Truman Capote’s life when he immersed himself in his classic True Crime novel In Cold Blood, the first “non-fiction novel” of its kind. Published in 1965, this revolutionary book would make Capote the most famous writer in … Read More
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
The Devil wears Red, White and Blue. Kurosawa could not have done it better. Promethean director Clint Eastwood‘s LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, followup to his daring FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, is culturally, philosophically and artistically one of the great Japanese films. Made In America. Unlike FLAGS, this Iwo Jima tale has nothing to do with Joe Rosenthal‘s photograph, instead told … Read More
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS
Dispiritying, Disheartenying, Distressying. THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS needs to take a Prozac. Relentlessly depressing, director Gabriele Muccino’s first English feature film is Inspired by a True Story – which only inspires nausea with their ubiquity these days – and though its intent is to be a “feel-good” movie, it goes awry in its execution, paying such sadistic detail to every … Read More
SANDS OF IWO JIMA
Jingo All The Way. John Wayne drawls his way through yet another war movie where thirty-something teenagers with clean shirts and Christian mouths storm battlegrounds where they die operatically from bullets that don’t make exit wounds; powerful enough in its day to be regarded a “classic,” SANDS OF IWO JIMA elevated Wayne from studio standard to worldwide megastar. But it’s … Read More