Wanna know how I got these (O)scars?… Joaquin Phoenix is unpredictable, funny, disturbing, and when you meet him, he might just kill you. In JOKER, he won the 2020 Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Actor… But was he really acting? JOKER, like STEPHEN KING’S IT, shows clowns for what they really are: insecure, unbalanced, traumatized sociopaths. Again, was Joaquin … Read More
I’M STILL HERE
Not all there. It’s the biggest Andy Kaufman joke ever played on the public, not played by Andy Kaufman. Joaquin Phoenix takes Hollywood on a long ride in I’M STILL HERE, by proclaiming he is retiring from acting and starting a career in rap music. And Hollywood buys it. It’s a strange animal, this film, because it was originally sold … Read More
THE MASTER
MASTER-ful. Actor’s Actor + Actor’s Actor = Actors Actors Actors Actors. Joaquin Phoenix meets Philip Seymour Hoffman and all Asgard and Midgard tremble in their Acting wake. Freddie Quell (Phoenix) is a rudderless veteran returning from WWII, who stumbles upon the yacht of Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman), a “minister” for The Cause, one of those pseudo-scientific cults that likes to pretend … Read More
THE VILLAGE
Mythed it by that much. Somewhere between expectancy and deliverance – lies M. Night Shyamalan‘s THE VILLAGE. The people of an Amish-styled village share an uneasy truce with the mysterious beasts that haunt the surrounding woods – until a blind girl courageously braves the woods on a mission of mercy. The people of Covington lead an idyllic Old World existence, … Read More
SIGNS
Cream of the Crop Circles. SIGNS is a storytelling masterpiece from writer-director, M. Night Shyamalan; a master moviemaker’s layered mosaic of fear, faith, family – and alien invasion. Don’t let the “alien” thing throw you – like every Night thriller, SIGNS is not of the Running and Screaming stripe, rather, a beautifully crafted lesson in film “making”; creative angles, smart … Read More
GLADIATOR
Unleashing Helle. Truly GLADIATOR is the stuff of great fiction; a story so well-orchestrated and superbly told, there might well have been in Roman history a general who became a slave, a slave who became a gladiator, a gladiator who won an Oscar. But – as they used to say in ancient Rome – “only in Hollywood…” Russell Crowe is … Read More
WALK THE LINE
Blues for The Man In Black. I was introduced to Johnny Cash by my older cousin, via A Boy Named Sue and Cash’s take on being led to the gallows, 25 Minutes To Go. This was before I discovered a boy named Alice (Cooper) and Led Zeppelin’s Gallows Pole, subsequently leading to deserting the previous generation’s outlaws (like Cash and … Read More