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
LIMITLESS
Full Frontal Lobity. Bradley Cooper takes a pill that makes him even sexier. Now how is that even possible? LIMITLESS is a breezy fantasy about a shiftless writer, Eddie Morra (Cooper), who is given a mysterious pill that allows him to access 100% of his brain, instead of the usual 20%. A super-man tale (or, in the case of Cooper, … Read More
DEFIANCE
In defiance of stereotypes. In the movie KNOCKED UP, five Jewish friends trying to score in a night club talk about the credibility of Jews being raised by one man: “If any of us is gonna score tonight, it’s because of Eric Bana in MUNICH.” Soon they’ll be talking the same way about Daniel Craig in DEFIANCE… 1941: during World … Read More
THE BOURNE SUPREMACY
Bourne Again. In THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, Matt Damon IS (still) Jason Bourne. The superspy from THE BOURNE IDENTITY (2002) is STILL on the lam, from the people who STILL want him dead – his ex-employers STILL at the CIA. Even though they’ve almost forgotten him at the opening of this movie, he lays low in India with his Euro chick, … Read More
GLADIATOR
Unleashing Helle. Truly GLADIATOR is the stuff of great fiction; a story so well-orchestrated and superbly told, there might well have been in Roman history a general who became a slave, a slave who became a gladiator, a gladiator who won an Oscar. But – as they used to say in ancient Rome – “only in Hollywood…” Russell Crowe is … Read More
TOMBSTONE
When The West Was Huckleberry. The PULP FICTION of westerns, with its vivid dialogue and firestorm set pieces, TOMBSTONE roars like a stallion on steel hooves, in a hail of Peacemaker gunfire and very real handlebar moustachios. TOMBSTONE is another retelling of the infamous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, but presented in such an epic, revisionist manner that the ill-fated … Read More