Trash, art, and the movies.
The film opens in Germany, at a train station in Alexanderplatz. The scene intercuts between Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster) at the train station, and flashbacks to a morgue and then her husband’s coffin. Ominously rumbling piano notes and a cutaway to birds suggest that this isn’t an ordinary…
The film is replete with its share of bodily fluid jokes, flatulence jokes, physical humor and, uh, an act involving fish you don’t want to know about. While McCarthy does well with some of the physical humor (she could be hilarious in stand-up), the slapstick is sporadic and the funnier moments are so sparse. The story itself is…
Space exploration is a dream that spans many centuries and cultures, and continues to persuade today. As Hanks points out, the very unattainability of the goal may be the root cause of our curiosity toward it. According to NASA’s Solar System Exploration web page, Earth’s moon is…
The new show has had the rough edges of the British version sanded down just a bit. It’s no longer quite as difficult to watch in bits. Perhaps this is because Ricky Gervais’ David Brent is devastatingly real while Steve Carrell’s Michael Scott is a bit of a buffoon. The UK Office always lets us believe this is all real and really happening. The American version, despite copying the original’s “reality show†trappings always…
Las Vegas, about the security staff at a casino primarily and secondarily about the other workers at that casino, offers none of that. It’s just another attempt at empty TV escapism, designed to numb minds after a hard day at the office. It’s popcorn TV…
SCTV, though, has a higher batting average than most sketch comedies. The latest DVD set chronicles one of the series’ later years, but it’s still got plenty of laughs. There is the occasional skit (or episode) that completely falls dead, but most of these pack enough laughs still to merit your viewing.
In June 1973, the Nixon appointee-loaded Supreme Court reorganized the obscenity laws. Law enforcement began cracking down. At the same time, the Mafia, the film argues, got involved in adult film distribution. By the mid-1970’s, the feds decided to prosecute Harry Reems. The prosecutor? Larry Parrish, a former preacher. Parrish implemented, as Alan Dershowitz called it, “a very creative use” of the…
Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage) is part of a machinery without a conscience: The arms industry. To illustrate, I think, the soullessness of this machinery, the film opens with a vignette about the birth, life and death of a bullet. You see, from the bullet’s point of view, how it is manufactured, packaged, distributed, and ultimately, used. As with Andrew Niccol’s films, “Gattaca” and “The Truman Show,” Niccol personalizes…