Song for the Unsung. A high-pitched drone of violins imperceptibly morphs into the far-off air-scream of a diving German fighter plane. From the expanse of grey sky, a jot of shrill steel, growing into an engine roar, swelling into machine gun slaughter over a beach where 400,000 Allied soldiers huddle, stranded by circumstance, packed like lemmings, waiting for deliverance on … 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
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD
Car Chase as Metaphor for a Brave Mad World. We’ve been promised this movie for over a decade; since Mel Gibson was not a Nazi and still looked good in hot pants. Was it worth the wait? Hells to the exploding musclecar yes! MAD MAX: FURY ROAD is a ballet of fiery incandescence, a violent visual poem of psycho-licious demolition … Read More
THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
Darkest Knight. 60 years ago writer-director Christopher Nolan would have been one of the premier exponents of film noir. Conceptually and cinematically, his DARK KNIGHT trilogy is one of the most somber excursions into dual personality crises, moral relativism, vigilantism and nihilism. And Batman would have been Humphrey Bogart. “Here’s lookin’ at you, Gotham…” Just as dour as Bogart, Christian … Read More
STAR TREK: NEMESIS
Nature vs. Nurture vs. Nemesis. Jonathan Frakes is the most useless, insipid character in the STAR TREK universe. There, I said it. (Send your hate mail to 80 Vanilla Street, Who-Gives-A-Shit, CA, Stardate 2350.) Now let’s talk about useless, insipid movies… STAR TREK NEMESIS is the fourth and last The Next Generation (TNG) adventure, continuing the STAR TREK legacy with … 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
ROCK N ROLLA
High Voltage Rock n Roll. Another twisty, spanky, kablooey tale from the dirty messiah madman who gave us LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS (1998), Guy Ritchie, about expensive hoods, cheap hoods, indestructible hoods, Russian hoods, and a McGuffin painting that we never see that everyone wants. As with Ritchie’s other slambanging movies, describing the plot is a futile exercise, … Read More