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
I AM NUMBER FOUR
NUMBER FOUR is number two. Like a turd falling from the sky and hitting every branch of the Cliché Tree on the way down, I AM NUMBER FOUR dumps on us by way of TWILIGHT and the Uncanny X-Men. And every other superhero/teen/action/alien movie it can possibly steal from. A couple of sexy aliens are fugitives on Earth from a … Read More
DREAMCATCHER
Same Shit Different Director. So why is it that films made from Stephen King’s stories turn out, for the most part, to be movies that look as if they’d been chiseled out of Silly Putty by escapees from the Home For the Terminally Inept? — Harlan Ellison, Oct 1984, “In Which We Scuffle Through The Embers” (Magazine of S&SF). DREAMCATCHER … Read More
THE CRAZIES 2010
Crazy like a pox. Remake of the 1973 George A. Romero movie of the same name, THE CRAZIES is a simple, shallow, well-made thriller. A virus drives the people of a bucolic Midwestern town crazy and they start killing people. I don’t mean to nitpick, but killing is kinda natural for a species that kills to eat, to mate, to … Read More
A PERFECT GETAWAY
Sunny, with a chance of homicide. Remember when it was cool for a movie to have a twist? Even a bad twist was a Good Thing. Then M. Night Shyamalan came along and gave us The Greatest Twist Of All in THE SIXTH SENSE… and screwed it up for everyone. “Twist” has become a bad word over the last decade, … Read More
STOP-LOSS
Nothing Stops the Loss. “FUCK THE PRESIDENT!” I didn’t say it. Ryan Phillippe did. In its stunning 37th minute, STOP-LOSS gets raw as Staff Sergeant Brandon King (Phillippe) protests being “stop-lossed” – involuntarily deployed again after his voluntary service to the U.S. military has ended. The Stop-Loss program is exactly what it sounds like: a fine print clause in military … Read More
LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD
In Bruce We Trust. Never trust a computer you can’t throw out your window. – Steve “Woz” Wozniak. This mess is not his fault; he’d rather be home with a cold one; he’s no superman, just an average guy who must act like a super man – and I think he’s wearing the same sweaty shirt from DIE HARD (1988). … Read More
ROCK STAR
Mock Star. In ROCK STAR, Chris Cole (played sufficiently blandly by Mark Wahlberg) is a big loser with bigger hair and an even bigger voice. Through a freak turn of events he is hired by an international metal band (Steel Dragon, led by a big-haired Dominic West) and attains his dream of rock superstardom. Finding he is too vagina-whipped – … Read More