Full Metal Jacket: Death, Duality, and Donuts
I adore Full Metal Jacket even though it is, clearly, a difficult film to keep company with. The film is not Stanley Kubrick’s most cohesive effort or his most accessible. It is, […]
You Are Excused From Seeing Cosmopolis
I was in love with David Cronenberg movies before I ever saw one. I must have been about 12 when I heard about a movie called Scanners (’80) in which […]
Mind Control Double Feature #33: Samurai Hit Men
If you’ve seen a lot of movies, and you have, you know all about being a hit man. All the tension, the stress, the long hours. It’s a tough job. […]
The Best of Netflix Streaming: Bottle Rocket
It seems this is the week to pick up old habits. That’s not a euphemism for cruising for elderly nuns—it means we’re revisiting long-languishing features here at Stand By For Mind Control. […]
Let’s Remake Blade Runner And Cuckoo’s Nest
The most alarming thing a filmmaker can say when turning a novel into a movie is, “We’re being true to the book.” This is a terrible thing to do. What […]
Dennis Quaid At Any Price
You know what we haven’t done in a while? If you answered “bathe in the blood of innocent capybaras,” you’d be right, but sort of weird. That’s because what I’m […]
Searching For Sugar Man: How To Judge Documentaries?
I finally saw the documentary Searching For Sugar Man, the hit from Sundance ’12 that just took home an Oscar last week. I liked it, and I can see why […]
Mind Control Double Feature #32: A Good Yesterday to Die Hard
As the roof of Nakatomi Plaza explodes in a red fury, a man leaps off the edge. The fire hose he’s tied to arrests his plummet with a hard slam […]
Upstream Color Will Crawl Inside You And Take Over Your Brain
It’s been a long time, too long, since my brain has been as weirdly and intensely affected by a new movie as it was last night at a screening of […]
Feel Lucky: The 10 Best Clint Eastwood Movies
Do you know what wakes me up nights in a cold sweat? It’s the ghastly thought that somewhere out there some poor soul hears the name “Clint Eastwood” and his/her […]
Live-Blogging Ye Olde Oscars
9:00 – Like a corpse dragged from one grave to another because of the condos going up in what was once a convenient swamp, so too is this show dragged […]
Argo Is The Worst Movie of 2012
The worst movie, you say? Argo? The one poised to take home a Best Picture Oscar in two days, which you found to be a wholly inoffensive, exciting little diversion? […]
Mind Control Double Feature #31: How Not To Make A Movie
The best way to learn how not to make a movie is, nine times out of ten, to watch a movie. Lessons will be readily evident. For as many great […]
Donnie Darko Unexplained
There exists no better medium for approximating dreams than film. Dreams and movies work in images to tell a story or impart a feeling or remind your brain of something […]