A film that takes us somewhere, yet goes nowhere. Quentin Tarantino once again brazenly rewrites history in his scintillating homage to La La Land of the 1960s, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD. Hollywood 1969. Two tales intertwine – one, a tale of an actor and his stuntman, hustling for work in a business that has moved past their cowboy … Read More
THE REVENANT
Revenge served cooooold… Think of the coldest pain you’ve ever felt. The most painful cold, biting into your delicate earlobes, torturing your dead toes, eating into your fingers; no feeling, no hope, no vestige of pumping blood. Now multiply it by Leonardo DiCaprio in a bear rug. In the stark survivalist thriller THE REVENANT, Leo is tracker Hugh Glass, a … Read More
THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
Illegal Money Never Sleeps. Leonardo DiCaprio overacts his way into the heart of Wall Street, into the pants of hookers and into federal jail. He’s playing a real life character, stockbroker Jordan Belfort, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, whom I hope is at this moment dying a slow, horrible death from cancer of the knob… The problem with millionaires like … Read More
DJANGO UNCHAINED
Once Upon a Black Time in the White West. Whiteys: 0. Niggers: 1 Quentin Tarantino, as he did with INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009), once again punches history in the face and rewrites the underdog as the alpha dog in DJANGO UNCHAINED. And says nigger a lot. DJANGO UNCHAINED throws that word at us in such forceful abandon that it becomes hilarious … Read More
REVOLUTIONARY ROAD
The Road To Nowhere leads straight through Suburbia… Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. — Henry David Thoreau. Leo and Kate–together again! For those emotionally trigger-happy TITANIC fans who thought REVOLUTIONARY ROAD would be a reteaming of their favorite star-crossed lovers to recapture lachrymose memories (like the manipulative … Read More
SHUTTER ISLAND
Just dropped in – to see what condition my condition was in… The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. –John Milton, Paradise Lost. What a beautiful, sophisticated, mind-leveling thriller! SHUTTER ISLAND is not “scary,” but creepy, disturbing and filled with enough tension and intrigue to drown a plush … Read More
INCEPTION
Dreaming in Black and Baby Blue. Who was it that said, “Leo is soooo dreamy”? Everyone. So what’s all the fuss over INCEPTION? It’s Leo being dreamy; that is, appearing in people’s dreams. And hasn’t Leo appeared in ALL our dreams at some point? Ahem! Onward… Written, produced and directed by Christopher Nolan, INCEPTION proves once again that while everyone … Read More
BODY OF LIES
Pants on Fire! Little Boy Leo is now Big Bad DiCaprio. In BODY OF LIES, Leo has finished growing the beard he started in BLOOD DIAMOND and is neck deep in Syriana. He is undercover CIA operative Ferris, stationed in the Middle East, embroiled in an undercover plot to plant a Taliban newbie as a rising demagogue, in order to … Read More
THE AVIATOR
That Magnificent Man and His Flying Machines. A powerful biopic of sex, insanity and aeroplanes. In any order. Martin Scorsese directs THE AVIATOR based loosely on the life of Howard Hughes, with Leonardo DiCaprio adequately filling the shoes and flying the skies of the eccentric billionaire. (Leo’s star status slightly distracts, as does his phony accent. Jim Carrey – originally … Read More
BLOOD DIAMOND
A Rough in the Diamond. The greed of the human animal is such a compelling thing that even decrying that greed will only feed it. Such is the paradox facing Edward Zwick‘s powerful BLOOD DIAMOND, a movie set in the west African country of Sierra Leone in 1999, when Revolutionary United Front rebels took over the nation’s capital, using diamonds … Read More
THE DEPARTED
Martin Scorsese’s Badfellas. Cops who are robbers. Robbers who are cops. And a hip hop star synonymous with exposed underpants who steals the show. A welcome return to form for the premier gangster movie-maker, Martin Scorsese, who bats one outa the park with THE DEPARTED. Ferociously funny, doggedly compelling, a tour de force of gritty production, tightly-wound storyline, sneeringly salty … Read More
ROMEO AND JULIET 1996
More Comedie Than Tragedie. All I’m saying is: Leonardo DiCaprio should stop being prettier than his female co-stars. In ROMEO + JULIET, snub-nosed Claire Danes bravely steps up to out-femme Leo’s manly prettiness. And fails. Leonardo is Romeo (kinda archly poetic, no?) and Claire is his Juliet. Shakespeare‘s retelling of Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe is retold with creative conceptualizing and … Read More
TITANIC
The King Of The World meets The Bitch Of The Sea. Let’s get one thing straight before we embark on this perilous journey into Hollywood History: the only “truth” in this movie is that the RMS Titanic did sink in April 1912 and that Leonardo DiCaprio is prettier than Kate Winslet. Everything else in James Cameron’s TITANIC is marshmallow fancy. … Read More
GANGS OF NEW YORK
An Army Of One – Daniel Day-Lewis. There are three reasons to watch Martin Scorsese’s superlative GANGS OF NEW YORK: Daniel. Day. Lewis. Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone, Al Pacino as Tony Montana, Gary Oldman as Sid Vicious, Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday and (to wax more modern) Hugh Jackman as Wolverine: iconic performances, one and all. Daniel Day-Lewis … Read More