LSD Trip for Intelligentsia. In ALTERED STATES, Eddie (William Hurt) and Arthur (Bob Balaban) are two university scientists experimenting on human regression (mentally reverting to a primitive state) using an isolation tank and sensational drugs, with Blair Brown (the Rene Russo of her day) as Eddie’s supportive yet doubting wife. Back in the day when university professors could drop LSD … 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
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
LADY IN THE WATER
Part real. Part fable. All Night. In his book, On Directing Film, David Mamet says of movies, “it’s all make-believe. The question is, how good is the make-believe going to be?” M. Night Shyamalan‘s LADY IN THE WATER is truly what it sells itself as – a bedtime story; make-believe of the highest order, taken with a generous pinch of … Read More
2010: ODYSSEY TWO
A Midget in the Footsteps of Giants. No one said it would be easy. Following in the mythic footsteps of Stanley Kubrick and equally legendary Arthur C. Clarke. Maybe it was this inimitable pedigree that gave lowly Peter Hyams the impetus to craft such a reasonably watchable sequel to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. A tension-filled space trek where we laugh … Read More