“The cinema is an invention without any future.” ― Louis Lumière
In multiplexes this week are Non-Stop (56), another generic action picture starring Liam Neeson. What most intrigues me about this picture is the use of a hyphen in the title. AP style says it should be there, but others say it shouldn’t be. It’s the most controversial hyphen question in a movie since The 40 Year […]
Read More Opening in New York, February 28, 2014Here I go again with another Oscar Challenge. It’s simple–just pick the winner in each of the 24 categories. I suggest you simply cut and paste the list of categories below in a comment and type your choice of winner next to it. If you change your mind, either edit your comment or post a […]
Read More The Sixth Annual Gone Elsewhere Oscar ChallengeThis week we have films by two of the worst directors in Hollywood. If only Uwe Boll were releasing a film, it would be the perfect storm of cinematic wretchedness. From McG, who has a name like a sandwich from McDonald’s, comes 3 Days to Kill (38), Kevin Costner’s attempt to have a career reborn […]
Read More Opening in New York, February 21, 2014Per James’ request, we’re starting a new post on the mysterious devolving of some actors’ careers. I start with Eric Bana. Here is the comment I posted: I was reading Esquire and they had their “Alternative Oscars” and one of them was “The Clive Owen Award for Career Regression,” or something like that, and […]
Read More Inexplicable Career ArcsPaul Verhoeven said, in a more-recent Robocop interview, he laid-out his intent on his view of Robocop being the “American Jesus” after he had read the script, that he saw the entire “Jesus Myth” of the “American Jesus”, insomuch as it relates to the events of the film and one of Robocop’s final lines in the movie (after having just […]
Read More Review: RobocopIf nothing else, at least Winter’s Tale is not formulaic. I had no idea what was coming in each scene, and I read the book (though that was almost 30 years ago, and I have a feeling the movie makes liberal changes). It’s gotten some pretty bad reviews, and I can’t deny the movie is […]
Read More Review: Winter’s TaleThis week is highlighted (or low-lighted) by a pair of unnecessary remakes. Opening on Wednesday was a reboot (god how I hate that word–which basically means, “we have no new ideas”) of Robocop (52). The original, now 27 years old (!) was an exciting, still fresh work, so there was no need to revisit. Marc […]
Read More Opening in New York, February 14, 2014This, one of the greatest action scenes ever. Just below the ending of A Bittersweet Life and levels above the hallway shootout in Hard Boiled lies this, The Restaurant Fight Scene from The Protector. Sheer action lunacy on the grandest scale, and one of the greatest extended takes ever committed to celluloid. That is all […]
Read More My Favorite Scene #4: The Restaurant Fight Scene in The ProtectorThe Monuments Men is a war film for art history majors, and could have been called “The Really Nice Half-Dozen.” It’s in the tradition of the war film that features a small group of men on a mission, but it is a curiously slack narrative, a patchwork of scenes that don’t build any momentum. Directed […]
Read More Review: The Monuments Men1991. I was a dorky Junior in high school, listening to nothing but film scores and Public Enemy while reading whatever screenplays I could afford from Pix Poster Cellar in Cambridge, MA. Ooh, and I got my first laserdisc player! A chronological list of releases can be found here. 1) Best of 1991 or […]
Read More A Decade in Film: 1991This week we have the first significant 2014 release, and an animated film that is getting surprisingly good reviews. Monuments Men (53), was pushed back from a late 2013 release. The tepid reviews would seem to indicate why. It’s a good cast, but most reviews say it’s nothing special. George Clooney, as a director, has […]
Read More Opening in New York, February 7, 2014Every year I look forward to Vanity Fair’s Hollywood issue, especially the cover. Usually there’s a lot of hue and cry over it, because it doesn’t have non-whites on the cover. This is the first year that it does–two! (I speak of only the left-third of the three panels, which is the only one visible […]
Read More Vanity Fair Hollywood CoverSo I was watching Groundhog Day, because, you know, it’s almost Groundhog Day, and I noticed an actor with a small part looked like a young Michael Shannon. Turns out it is Michael Shannon. For those who have seen the movie several times, he’s the young man in the diner who is going to be […]
Read More Random Thread for February, 2014
Gone Elsewhere 