Pwnage. Two couples whose sons were involved in a school fight meet to discuss how to deal with their sons. And fight. Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly are Penelope and Michael Longstreet, whose son lost two teeth being hit with a stick by the son of Nancy and Alan Cowan (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz). Film opens with Penelope … Read More
Paradise by the Gashed Gored Light. Elysium (Elysian Fields), Greek mythology: 1) Paradise reserved for heroes to whom the gods had granted immortality. Separate from the realm of Hades, admission was initially reserved for mortals related to the gods. Later, it expanded to include those chosen by the gods, the righteous and heroic. 2) a state or place of perfect … Read More
Puppetheart. A man suffering from depression bounces back to functionality when he adopts a beaver puppet to speak for him. Hmm… can’t tell whether THE BEAVER is a tragicomedy or a psychodramedy… it’s cute, it’s furry, it’s got a big mouth and it’s slightly insane – but enough about Mel Gibson. Jodie Foster (who last shared screentime with Gibson in … Read More
Sexy Bronson. Yes, they deserve to die – and I hope they burn in hell! – Samuel L. Jackson, A TIME TO KILL. In THE BRAVE ONE, Jodie Foster is Erica Bain, a New York resident with an independent radio talk show, happily engaged to a young doctor (Naveen Andrews, a Londoner, with Indian ethnicity). One night, walking in Central … Read More
The Heistman Cometh. INSIDE MAN opens with Clive Owen, as Dalton Russell, in hard close-up, warning us to listen to every word he says, because he’ll only say it once. (As George McFly might say, I don’t think I can handle that kind of pressure.) Dalton goes on to boast of his Perfect Heist; we know he speaks truth because … Read More
Plight Planning. BOARDING OUR FLIGHT: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen; our FLIGHTPLAN for this journey involves aircraft designer Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster), whose life in Europe has been jarred to a halt by the accidental death of her husband (she swears he “fell,” not jumped), prompting her to return to the United States with her six-year-old daughter, Julia (a somber … Read More
Buried within The Message from Vega – The Message from Sagan. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND needed updating. CONTACT is that update. Though it may never attain the lofty heights of commercialism that CLOSE ENCOUNTERS enjoyed, CONTACT is, in fact, a more intelligent vision of extra-terrestrial communication with our outer-spiral-arm planet. Jodie Foster is SETI maverick, Ellie Arroway, who … Read More