When Immovable Corruption Meets Unstoppable Corruption. MARK FELT: THE MAN WHO BROUGHT DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE is a clickbait title. It tells us it’s going to push the mainstream narrative that FBI Associate Director William Mark Felt singlehandedly brought down the corrupt Nixon administration in 1974, by leaking anonymously to the press during Nixon’s Watergate scandal. Nicknamed “Deep Throat” by … Read More
GERALD’S GAME
Freedom is just a handcuff away. Vacation. Tote bag. Two pairs of chrome steel handcuffs. Long-married couple Gerald (Bruce Greenwood) and Jessie Burlingame (Carla Gugino) are trying to revive their marriage with a new game. After Jessie is handcuffed to the bedposts, she loses her taste for the game and says No. Uncuff me. Gerald coyly says no. Then he … Read More
THE CHALLENGER DISASTER
Hubris Greed Politics vs. Genius. For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. — Richard Feynman, “Report to Congress on Challenger Investigation 1986.” Indepth chronicle of Dr. Richard Feynman’s investigation into the Space Shuttle Challenger’s 1986 explosion. When I first heard about the TV movie, THE CHALLENGER DISASTER, I shrugged it off, … Read More
FLIGHT
A career ruined by alcohol, a movie ruined by Alcoholics Anonymous. FLIGHT opens with a tit, a drink, a smoke and a bump. This movie is gonna be… Absolutely Awesome! Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) wakes in a hotel room with a solid “9” (Nadine Velazquez), who nonchalantly goes about nakedly lighting a cig and finding her clothes. Whip answers his … Read More
STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS
The Wrath Of Cumberbatch. Hold up a mirror to STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN and you get – STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS. We get Spock and his infamous line in the first ten minutes, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”; we get the crisis which can only be diverted by someone illustrating that … Read More
DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS
Movie For Schmucks. Steve Carell is a schmuck. And in DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS, Steve Carell is a schmuck, a bothersome new friend of Paul Rudd, who is not exactly a schmuck, but can’t seem to break into that comedy leading man status that he deserves. We presume his agent and manager and reader must be schmucks. Carell and Rudd do … Read More
THIRTEEN DAYS
Immovable Force meets Unstoppable Accent. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal. — John F. Kennedy, address to the nation, June 1963 after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The people were real, the crisis … Read More
PASSENGER 57
Plain Plane Pain. Wesley Snipes is airline security specialist Cutter, who is the titular PASSENGER 57 onboard a flight when it is hijacked by British terrorists trying to escape the FBI (Bruce Payne as Charles Rane (who falls mainly on the plane), and a strikingly beautiful Elizabeth Hurley as his Bad Girl). Wesley must use his patented Wesley-Kwon-Do to bring … Read More
NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS
I’m going to take a Treasure Bath! For all its contrived clue-solving and annoying coincidences and tiresome car chases, and even Nicolas Cage‘s mourning face, NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS is a lot of fun. Maybe producer Jerry Bruckheimer had something to do with the fact we can hardly take a breath before the next relentless action sequence derived from … 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 … 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
THE WORLD’S FASTEST INDIAN
Like A Bat Out Of Invercargill… To Go Faster: that was the single-minded purpose of Herbert J. “Burt” Munro (1899 – 1978), whose life story was an “inspirational movie” just waiting to happen. The tagline boasts, “based on one hell of a true story,” justifiably it would seem, as Munro – a fearless, free-spirited New Zealand rider who broke land … Read More
I, ROBOT
I, Gamebot. I, Human, even whilst viewing the first trailers of I, ROBOT, knew that They, 20th Century Fox, were destined to make Film, Botch-up. Sure enough, this movie bytes! Pounding home the sordid fact that Big Studios – as cookie-cutter idioms unto themselves – must morph any greed-driven, blockbuster-bent story from cerebral concept to popcorn-glutton whiz-bangery, I, ROBOT is … Read More
THE CORE
Anthropocentric Spin. I want to hurt this movie. Like it hurt me. THE CORE opens with a Peter Gallagher clone sans Eyebrows dropping dead at a board meeting – so begins a series of events that establish the Earth’s core has inexplicably stopped spinning, causing electromagnetic anomalies. So scientists must drill down and re-start the spin with The Universal Solvent … Read More