Scorsese’s Mean Streets
After film school, Martin Scorsese spent four years making his first feature, Who’s That Knocking At My Door? (’67), starring the then unknown Harvey Keitel. It didn’t make a splash. […]
Category Archives: Active Observation
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Disaster
The Hobbit, as presented at 48fps* (i.e. high frame rate, HFR), marks the death of cinema. At least digital projection, depressing as it is, is being improved to the point […]
They Call Me Mr. Hobbitterness
Let’s accentuate the positive, shall we? That moment—the one in the trailer for The Hobbit—where all the dwarves start singing their sorrowful song? That’s pretty good. There’s a funny bit […]
Wake in Fright: The Nature of Man
To dream of the devil and wake in a fright.
-Old English curse
The Spy Who Bored Me
Are you kidding me? This is supposed to be Roger Moore’s best outing as James Bond? The Spy Who Loved Me (’77) is not anyone’s best outing as anything. To […]
Samsara, Baraka, Etcetera
There are shots in Samsara (’12) of places you can’t believe exist on Earth, like the stone temples in the jungles of Myanmar that look like a CGI landscape from […]
I’ll Be Damme’d
Friday night was the monthly Midnites for Maniacs screening. In case you aren’t lucky enough to live in San Francisco, or if you live here but are just too foolish […]
Killing Them Softly, but not Subtly
Is it possible for a film to be obtuse and heavy-handed simultaneously? Hold that thought. Let’s consider. I just came back from Andrew Dominik‘s third feature, Killing Them Softly, starring Brad […]
…Reflections On Dead Man…
…An acid western, a revisionist western, a post-modern western, the western Tarkovsky never made, Jim Jarmusch’s masterpiece, Dead Man (’95), has been dubbed many things. It is best not to […]
Silver Linings Playbook; Cloudy with Bright Spots
I’ve been thinking lately about nuance. About shades of grey. It started with a comment-tiff I had with folks over at Bad Ass Digest. I suggested an alternative viewpoint to […]
“I Am The Motherfucking Shore Patrol!” Hal Ashby And The Last Detail
The Last Detail (’73), director Hal Ashby’s follow-up to Harold & Maude, is a mysteriously compelling little movie. There’s not a dull moment in it, yet nothing happens. Ashby and […]
Quentin Tarantino is not as Cool as Male Strippers
I just watched Magic Mike, Steven Soderbergh’s latest feature. This is a film about male strippers that stars Channing Tatum and Alex Pettyfer. It was the only one of Soderbergh’s films […]
Explosive Wu Xia Action
I am not, in general, a kung fu fighter. That’s not to say that I can’t get into the balletic precision and athletic exuberance that imbues top-notch martial arts movies. […]
On Lincoln, Spielberg, And Crushing Boredom
One of the inconcievably vast number of brain-rapingly awful things about Indiana Jones And The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull was Steven Spielberg’s boring direction, evident in every boring frame […]