Tragedy at the top of the world. Climbing Mount Everest was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life. I wish I’d never gone. I suffered for years of PTSD, and still suffer from what happened. I’m glad I wrote a book about it. But, you know, if I could go back and relive my life, I would never … Read More
Riding the Lightning Across the (Parallel) Universe. DONNIE DARKO brings his penchant for skipping across parallel universes to the twisted love-child of INCEPTION and GROUNDHOG DAY. Director Duncan Jones (Bowie’s progeny and the wunderkind behind MOON, his film debut) proves that the disturbing resonance and edge-of-seat storytelling finesse he brought to that old-fashioned new tale was not a fluke. SOURCE … Read More
Broham Interruptus. Don’t you just hate it when your brother goes off to war and he supposedly gets killed, and you start putting the moves on his wife, and then he comes back? Don’t you just hate that?! What separates Jim Sheridan‘s BROTHERS from Michael Bay’s PEARL HARBOR (same plot, different war) is that BROTHERS is watchable. Starring Tobey Maguire … Read More
Darkness is as Darko does… And I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad The dreams in which I’m dyin’ are the best I’ve ever had… — Tears For Fears, “Mad World.” The Tears For Fears song, Mad World, closes DONNIE DARKO. As it softly meanders under the closing montage of characters, everything in this movie clacks into … Read More
Lessons in Amerikan Euphemism. THE LIE: “America doesn’t torture.” THE PLOT: CIA authorizes kidnapping and torture of a suspected terrorist in a misguided attempt to thwart further terrorism. THE EUPHEMISM: “extraordinary rendition.” THE TRUTH: America DOES torture. All my life I’ve regarded the word “rendition” to mean “the act of rendering.” So how the hell does it come to mean … Read More
JARHEAD is the new JACKET. Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy. — Henry Kissinger. “Every war is different. Every war is the same.” Kubrick’s FULL METAL JACKET (1987) followed U.S. Marines from boot camp to Viet Nam. Director Sam Mendes keeps the formula and updates the war in JARHEAD (to the … Read More
Brokeback Mountin’: a true American Love Story (formulaic, clichéd and dull). THE DAYS OF OUR LIVES meets The Gays of Our Lives, director Ang Lee’s BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is an ambitious yet maudlin, slightly above-average American love story. Slightly. Only American love stories have such easily-defined plot arcs; only American love stories cull the prettiest protagonists as their principals; only American … Read More