Shark Poop Swim Eat. Beautifully staged, excellently performed and brilliantly explained, J.C. Chandor‘s conference-table thriller is about the financial crash of 2008, and the 700 billion dollar American bailout that followed. But nowhere does MARGIN CALL give us a date, place or corporation name; it shows us AnyCompany, Inc., populated by AnySharks dealing with EveryOne’s money. It is a story … Read More
HORRIBLE BOSSES
Hitchcock… Hitch-Not. Well, two out of three ain’t bad. Two out of three HORRIBLE BOSSES, that is. There’s Kevin Spacey as Boss #1, reprising his role from SWIMMING WITH SHARKS as pure A-Hole; there’s Colin Farrell as Boss #2, creating an eccentric new role for himself as a balding, paunched lunatic. And there’s Jennifer Aniston as Boss #3, supposedly a … Read More
THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS
The Film That Stares Into Space. Your tax dollars at work. A few years ago, I read about the U.S. military exploring “paranormal combat techniques” in George W. Bush’s Fake War On Terror: using goats as test subjects, the Amerikan Military were trying to train soldiers to kill terrorists by staring at them to psychically stop their hearts. No, it’s … Read More
THE NEGOTIATOR
Two Wrongs making Two Rights. THE NEGOTIATOR would have scored higher Cukee ratings had it not opted for melodramatic Hollywood-speak and Samuel L. Jackson‘s penchant for delivering didactic lines as if he was Jules in PULP FICTION explaining stuff to Vincent Vega. Jackson is police hostage negotiator Danny Roman – the best at what he does – who is framed … Read More
MOON
Space Oddity. In 1969, two years before director Duncan Jones was born, David Bowie released the single, Space Oddity. 40 years later, Bowie’s son, Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones releases his own space oddity – the brilliant MOON, an intelligent, thoughtful, unsettling, dialogue-driven drama and the first true science fiction movie in a light year. “Commencing countdown, engines on…” This isn’t … Read More
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Counting to Dumb. In this vacuous drama supposedly based on a true story, Old Hand (Kevin Spacey) teaches Teen Models (Kate Bosworth, Aaron Yoo, Liza Lapira, Jacob Pitts) to count cards and take on Vegas. Happens that Old Hand is college professor Micky Rosa, and his Teen Models are his students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. I don’t … Read More
RECOUNT
Stealing the World with Hanging Chad. Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything. – Josef Stalin. RECOUNT is another nail in the “democracy” coffin. Even for those who detest politics, this movie unfolds like a thriller rather than a dusty legal doc. Surely no one in Amerika believes the lie of “One Man One Vote”? … Read More
SUPERMAN RETURNS
Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back. So much strength, so little underpant. Superman is back. With his underpants hiked low enough to make George Reeves blush the color of cape. In SUPERMAN RETURNS, the blue-clad avenger sports a decidedly European bikini, giving a low-slung nod to the thong-exposed sluts we call modern teenagers. And the color of cape is no longer … Read More