Far East becomes Old West. John Sturges remakes Akira Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI as a western, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. Katanas become guns, samurai become gunslingers, Far East becomes Old West. A small Mexican farming village, tired of being ransacked annually by a marauder and his henchmen, hire seven gunslingers to repel them. Soon enough, the villagers realize meeting violence with violence … Read More
Freakonomics and Con-sumerism. “The mother of all evil is speculation…” So says Gordon Gekko in WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS. 23 years after WALL STREET (1987), Gekko’s back! Oliver Stone‘s sequel to that pimping film is just as confusing and hedonistic, with its insider knowledge and corporate thuggery, but set very much in the present of the 2008 economic meltdown. … Read More
Ghost in the Machine. Ewan McGregor is hired as a GHOST WRITER to liven up the memoirs of disgraced British ex-Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), an obvious analog for Tony Blair puling at the feet of the American administration then rewriting his legacy to make it sound like he wasn’t a lapdog. Spirited to a hideaway island, presented with … Read More
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