Knight’s in Black Battin’. A young Batman, in his second year of fighting crime, feels futility mounting in his quest to rid Gotham of corruption. When he is enlisted to help Lieutenant Jim Gordon against a terrorist known as The Riddler who is killing politicians, he begins to question how high up the corruption goes, and is confronted with … Read More
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN 2016
The Magnificent Minorities. Denzel Washington leads his black, brown, red and yellow gunslingers in cleaning up the Old West. Kinda like how black, brown, red and yellow people are still cleaning up the Modern Alt-West. In THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, director Antoine Fuqua, praying at the altar of Kurosawa, Leone and Eastwood, crafts a majestic modern take on this paean to … Read More
BLACK MASS
In the Name of da Fahder, da Son, and da Hollywood Spirit… The thing is… you’ve got the wrong Bad Guy. BLACK MASS is supposedly a tale about “the most violent criminal South Boston has ever known.” But when all the slogans say this, they’re looking at James “Whitey” Bulger. Even whilst adding that Bulger worked hand-in-glove with the corrupt … Read More
GREEN LANTERN
Attack of the 50-foot foreheads. The main qualification for being a Green Lantern is to have No Fear. Oh, and a high forehead. What’s with all the giant foreheads in GREEN LANTERN? Ryan Reynolds is Green Lantern’s forehead – and I must say, the perfect visual representation of the DC Comics ring-bearer; the great Mark Strong (SHERLOCK HOLMES 2009) is … Read More
KNIGHT AND DAY
Mission: Implausible. A movie built around its stunts. Ergo, if the audience was purely stuntpeople, KNIGHT AND DAY is awesome! But we’re just regular little cucumbers out here in the fluttering dark. As much as it thrills me to see a car flip over and miss Tom Cruise’s head by inches (even though thrills would have magnified had it connected), … Read More
ORPHAN
The Kid Ain’t Kidding. Kids are scary to begin with. Little adults with big heads who pretend they don’t know what we’re saying. They’re like clowns: some people find them fun; most know they’re evil. So in ORPHAN, when an upscale couple with two children adopt a 9-year-old orphan with scary theme music, familial bliss is not in the flow … Read More
RENDITION
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
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
KINSEY
A Cocksure Man. Apparently, Kinsey had a big one. For a pioneer of world-shaking sex research, that’s one helluva hook. And straight from the ‘truth is better than fiction’ bin – his wife had a small one… Liam Neeson is biologist Alfred C. Kinsey, who was single-handedly responsible for bringing sobriety and scientific method to the wild-eyed speculation and downright … Read More
FLIGHTPLAN
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