The film’s title, “Get Rich or Die Tryin’,” seems to have been ripped straight from the tagline of any number of “psyched up” music videos or basketball shoe commercials—all invented by white people sitting in the boardroom trying to think of ways to appeal to white, suburban youths’ stereotypes about black culture. The target audience for this film is so young, they…
“Jarhead,” a film directed by Sam Mendes, is based on a book by the same Anthony Swofford, regarding his experiences as a scout/sniper. The film is set in the early 1990’s, just before Operation: Desert Storm. I’m struggling to think of a way to move forward with this review, if only because the film doesn’t have a narrative. It consists mostly of vignettes, well, no, not even… call them, perhaps, a series of moments in which…
The problem with this approach is that they were using the wrong inspiration. While the Dreamworks approach works in “Shrek,” it really didn’t work in “Shark Tale” or “Madagascar.” Given they had the master storytellers of Pixar in their backyard, one wonders why Disney didn’t watch a few commentary tracks to learn from the…