In Praise of Bad Movies
Bad movies get a bad rap. It’s said they’re incompetent, meaningless, embarassing, written in a day by a lone monkey on a single typewriter, directed by escaped mental patients, acted […]
I Am Going to Act Your Pants Off
Here’s the thing about superhero movies: masks are terrible. Yes, I understand, one must protect his or her secret identity at all costs. But if Superman can get away with […]
Slippery Fish: The Dark Knight Rises vs. Hang ’em High
It all comes down to justice. Justice and the squirrelly soul of Commissioner Gordon. That’s what I learned from first watching Hang ’em High and then mulling over The Dark Knight Rises. […]
Brain Changing Movies
Movies ate my brain! They’ve eaten yours, too. They are insidious and powerful, they crawl into your head through your eyes and ears, spin their nests out of sparking ganglia […]
The Dark Knight Also Rises
If you believe what you read on the side of buses, The Dark Knight Rises is opening on July 20th. That’s pretty soon. And after recent disappointments (cough *Prometheus* cough), I’m […]
Death By Backstory
I’ve been thinking about backstory, thanks to the Evil One’s Spiderman post, in which he points out what should be to all sentient beings blindingly obvious, that no one on […]
He Does Anything a Spider Can, Obviously
You may have noticed that The Amazing Spiderman is now in theaters. Or maybe you didn’t. Maybe you thought, “Huh. People are talking about Spiderman again. But I just saw […]
Origin Stories
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience […]
The Color of A Scene
In the brilliant ’61 melodrama The Hustler, Paul Newman plays Fast Eddie Felson, basically a punk kid looking to make it big by playing and beating Minnesota Fats at straight […]
I Like to Watch (Part the First)
(UPDATED) I have been thinking about what makes films worth watching. There are, indubitably, a number of factors to consider: artistic merit originality entertainment value technical proficiency philosophical depth historical significance giant […]
The Grey Ghost
This is a post about spoilers. Or rather, it’s a post about what people call spoilers. And it will contain spoilers, if you think that’s the right word to use, […]
Building A Better Prometheus
What the hell, Prometheus? Why won’t you get out of my brain already? Normally when I see a big, dumb, special effects laden summer shitstorm, I forget about it in […]