Our Nixon: Fun With Super-8
Nixon and Watergate. Best political scandal ever? It’s the gift that keeps on giving, to the point where every scandal since has had “gate” stuck on the end of it, […]
Category Archives: Active Observation
2013: Hollywood’s Summer of Flops?
The summer movie season was littered with bombs, flops, and misfires. More mega-budget movies were released than in any previous summer season, thus over-crowding the marketplace, resulting in dud after […]
Onibaba Overtakes You
You know what can be really frightening? No. Don’t guess. It’s a trick question. That’s because once you know the answer, it’s no longer frightening; it’s just your face in […]
Don’t Watch Watership Down; Read It
Why not watch Watership Down, I thought? I hadn’t seen it since I was a wee little kid, and I recalled it being weird and dark and very unusual for […]
In Which Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster Leaves Me Begging For Mercy
Sometimes a movie begins, and within ten seconds you hate it, and try as you might to step back, to go with the flow, to give it another chance, nothing […]
The Bed-Sitting Room Is A Very Odd Film
Surely we’ve all had times in our lives when we’ve feared suddenly turning into a wardrobe or a foyer or a driveway or a blender or what have you. It […]
Hollywood Experiences A Hijacking
The new Danish film, A Hijacking (Kapringen), which I watched last night, seems like the mirror image of the upcoming Paul Greengrass / Tom Hanks film Captain Phillips. In the expensive Hollywood […]
Zapata Está Muerto; Viva Zapata!
Starring Marlon Brandon. Directed by Elia Kazan. A story of an aspiring hero overcoming his corrupted brother to lead his community to freedom from tyranny. I speak, of course, of Viva […]
Cinema Verité and the Reality Infection
It pains me to admit it, but I enjoy watching reality television. The Bachelor has long been a source of fascination for me, and when I have an extra hour […]
Old-Timey Sci-Fi Craziness: H.G. Wells’ Things To Come
So much time, so few movies. Wait. Reverse that. Watching H.G. Wells’ Things To Come for the first time, I wondered how I’d gone so long without seeing it. It’s […]
The Act of Killing is Easy
Killing is not a difficult act to accomplish. There are countless ways to get the job done. Be they bloody or tidy, quick or prolonged, sadistic or unfeeling—most murders are […]
5 Fun Facts About Elysium
In a fabricated future world like Elysium‘s, making up facts and defending their veracity without a drop of supporting data is perfectly acceptable. That’s a fact. It’s also a fact that […]
Worst Double Feature Ever: The Canyons And Elysium
With my brain addled and befuzzed by a vague illness on Friday, I allowed myself to see, within a few scant hours of one another, the newly released movies Elysium […]
Supercalifragilisticexpialidociously Strange: Watching Mary Poppins as an Adult
I never saw Mary Poppins as a kid. Yep, this Oscar-winning, smash-hit, family favorite completely passed me by. So, with Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks due in December — a film about the […]