I’m looking through you, You’re not the same. A fun retelling/revisiting the legend of The Rutles and their trousers. THE RUTLES 2: CAN’T BUY ME LUNCH is pieced together from outtakes of THE RUTLES (1978) and new talking head footage compiled by Eric Idle. And it shows. Playing his same Interviewer character from the previous film 26 years ago, a … Read More
THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES
The wrath of Tolkien, the majesty of Jackson, the fickleness of Fandom. Wizard Peter Jackson concludes the movie trilogy that stole his baby fat. THE HOBBIT comes to a spectacular end – greed, fury, purity of heart and interspecies love – to the wonderment of appreciative moviegoers and the chagrin of sniveling purists. THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE … Read More
BRAVE
That hair! That hair! That hair!… What story? So this is what Rebekah Brooks did before she was personal assistant to media magnate and zombie apocalypser Rupert Murdoch. In the Pixar production BRAVE, Rebekah’s avatar Princess Merida is graced with ravenous lava locks so visually titillating it distracts viewers into lauding the movie as a modern classic. You lost me … Read More
THE BOONDOCK SAINTS
In nomine Peckinpah, et spiritus Tarantino. In the name of the father – Peckinpah – and in the spirit of Tarantino. THE BOONDOCK SAINTS is like Sam and Quentin had a baby that hasn’t learned to walk yet. It’s a cult classic because it’s powerful and visceral: two Irish Boston prettyboys go vigilante vocation on the Russian mob, all broguey … Read More
THE LAST SAMURAI
Samurai Hei. I love sushi. I also love Toshiro Mifune. Guess that makes me a prime candidate for a samurai warrior – at least, that’s all it seems to take for a Westerner in this movie to wear kamishimo and wield katana. Despite that conceptual annoyance, this film does craft a sincere portrayal of an outsider undergoing an assimilation into … Read More
THE IMPOSTORS
The Genuine Article. After his magnificent, offbeat BIG NIGHT, writer-director Stanley Tucci reunites that movie’s cast (including Tony Shalhoub, Isabella Rossellini, Allison Janney, Campbell Scott, Oliver Platt, to name a few) in another offbeat triumph. Intentionally played as an hommage to slapstick and farce, THE IMPOSTORS finds two over-zealous, out-of-work actors, Arthur and Maurice (Tucci and Platt) offending an overrated … Read More
TIMELINE
Space-Time Continuum Saved by Surfer Dude & Community Theatre Actress. To call this movie “silly” would be an insult to silly movies. TIMELINE makes the execrable indecency of THE CORE look like a scientific masterpiece. With costumes borrowed from a traveling Renaissance Festival and actors borrowed from the local community theatre, even the brainless idiocy of FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY … Read More