Trash, art, and the movies.
This is, in a way, a difficult movie to analyze. First, because it’s a conglomeration of only bits and pieces of other movies, and not an entire story in its own right—possessing only slightly more continuity from scene to scene over its predecessors. Second, how do you know when the melodramatic acting and decidedly silly dialogue is actually bad…
“Brick” has every reason to be pretentious. I didn’t realize this going in, and for the first fifteen minutes I felt like I was watching a bad film school rehash of Godard in the most contrived manner. But somewhere along the way, this flagrantly self-affected and at times dementedly jocular piece of art-house trash earned my…
Let it be said that Antonio Banderas can take even an aggressively formulaic movie and turn it into a passable affair—sort of. In this case, he plays dance instructor Pierre Dulaine. From pierredulaine.com, I learn that the real Dulaine studied dance from the age of fourteen in England and by 21 became a member of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing, won several international championships, and moved to New York in…
In 1943, Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans and Christoph Probst were convicted of treason by the Nazi regime for their involvement in the White Rose—a resistance movement that opposed the Nazi party’s ideologies. It was not then fully realized by the German public that the Nazis were planning mass extermination of Jews. Thus, this film avoids revisiting…
My first impression was that this film was a shiny rehash of Andrew Niccol’s smug polemic “Lord of War.” I was right. However, oddly, it actually works. In this case, writer/director Jason Reitman (son of Ivan Reitman) takes on the tobacco industry, a ripe target for the kind of deconstruction and criticism for…
So someone figured out that sequels are inherently displeasing to the mind. Thus, we have not “Ice Age 2,” but “Ice Age: The Meltdown.” I can just imagine the umpteen meetings or memos that transpired to execute the change… but, seriously, let’s talk about the….
This adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “Lady Windermere’s Fan” has all the excitement of styrofoam. I…
A small town in the south known as Wheelsy, is one of those quiet “nothing ever happens here, so of course this is where this atrocity takes place” towns. The residents keep to themselves, confederate flags hang over stores, and the mayor (Gregg Henry) screams profanity in front of children. I wouldn’t want to live there, but the people are fairly content with their…