Che (aka The Argentine / Guerrilla, 2008) Movie Review

Adapted from the famous T-shirt, “Che” is director Steven Soderbergh’s massively long, two part movie about professional revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. A much more covert revolutionary himself, Soderbergh has shrewdly designed his career around the Scorsese Model of...

December 22nd, 2008 | Read More

The Backwoods (2006) Movie Review

John Boorman’s “Deliverance” gave birth to a new subgenre of films featuring middle class white men who desire the stoicism of life in the wild and of a more direct conflict for survival outside of the office cubicles and golf courses. It also established the genre’s archetypal...

April 20th, 2008 | Read More

Street Kings (2008) Movie Review

Movies like “Street Kings” are sitting ducks in a shooting range for film critics who laugh all through the movie only to condemn it for being so damn entertaining. Most movies are so sedated by studio interference, creative indifference, or artless craft that when a movie comes along with...

April 20th, 2008 | Read More

Sweeney Todd (2007) Movie Review

Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, and Helena Bonham-Carter have made so many films together that they’re starting to resemble each other. Depp has now made 6 films with Burton and it always seems as though he’s playing some hyper-real and slightly paler version of the ghostly director. As for Bonham-Carter,...

January 9th, 2008 | Read More

Halloween (2007) Movie Review

Tom Stoppard once wrote a one act play called “The Fifteen Minute Hamlet” which was, as you can probably guess, a pretty incoherent version of “Hamlet” performed in 15 minutes. You can imagine that much would have to be left out and that what was once dramatic and tragic would...

September 8th, 2007 | Read More

The Invasion (2007) Movie Review

This has to be the lamest alien invasion movie since the killer tomatoes attacked. I knew going in about the production troubles and the massive reshoots ordered by the studio honchos to ‘fix’ the film, but I thought I could give it a fair shake anyway. I mean, it’s got Nicole Kidman,...

August 24th, 2007 | Read More

Sunshine (2007) Movie Review

It’s 50 years from now and once again mankind faces extinction. Not from a meteoric Armageddon, or the inconvenient truth about the environment, but from the death of the sun itself. A second ice age threatens to end life as we know it and so mankind looks to its last hope for survival, a spacecraft...

August 12th, 2007 | Read More

Rescue Dawn (2006) Movie Review

Please do not confuse “Rescue Dawn” with a mid-80s Cannon Group production of a Chuck Norris film. This isn’t the movie where Chuck emerges from a river firing a water logged AK-47 in super slow motion. Nor is it the one where soulman C. Thomas Howell models for I. Goldberg and yells...

July 1st, 2007 | Read More

Hostel: Part II (2007) Movie Review

Eli Roth has the touch of the sophomore prankster. The lasting effect of all three of his films is a certain kind of Grand Guignol “Punk’D”, in which the “mark” is not only embarrassed, he’s also cut to pieces. You half expect Roth to pop up just as a character is...

June 12th, 2007 | Read More

Black Book (2006) Movie Review

Paul Verhoeven is a filmmaker who takes no prisoners. He wants nothing more than to fracture reality through his particularly pulpy cinematic lens and to project this grotesque image in front of as many spectators as possible. He makes no excuses for his excesses and this is one of the reasons why he...

June 10th, 2007 | Read More

Grindhouse (2007) Movie Review #2

Had “Grindhouse” been made by some up and coming neophyte filmmaker it would’ve been cut to shreds by the critical establishment. But the critical blank check given to Robert Rodriguez, and especially Quentin Tarantino is cashed in at this grindhouse, which is a very mediocre attempt...

April 9th, 2007 | Read More

The Lookout (2007) Movie Review

Elmore Leonard has a lot to answer for in regards to the current state of crime cinema. Thin, almost non-existent plots are given the power of verite when they are driven by Leonard’s oddball characters, with their pop culture obsessions and mental hang-ups. The stories seem like Hammett and Chandler...

March 30th, 2007 | Read More

Messiah of Evil (aka Dead People, 1973) Movie Review

A horror gem by the writing and directing team behind “Howard The Duck”? Hard to believe, but this is the genuine article, a largely forgotten early ’70s classic filled with moments that are so uncanny, the term “Lynchian” would be perfect had the David Lynch brand been...

March 25th, 2007 | Read More

Dead Silence (2007) Movie Review

The horror genre seems to be at a crossroads these days. Following the whole post-modern “Scream” cycle, the long haired ghosts from Japan and the final deluge of bind, torture, and kill films initiated by the release of “Saw”, there seems to be a clear confusion as to where to...

March 18th, 2007 | Read More

Salvage (aka Gruesome, 2006) Movie Review

The freedom and accessibility of digital video has unleashed a tidal wave of unwatchable horror movies by directors who would have difficulty chronicling a birthday party, let alone a cinematic narrative. This army of camcorder auteurs is seriously giving Ed Wood a run for the money, not to mention making...

March 9th, 2007 | Read More

Inland Empire (2006) Movie Review

David Lynch is one suave motherfucker. He lives life and makes movies on his own terms and he certainly knows what he likes. One of these things is coffee. He says he drinks about 15 cups of it a day and is now selling his own brand, the “David Lynch Signature Cup”. At a minute shy of three...

December 22nd, 2006 | Read More

The Host (2006) Movie Review #2

A monster rises out of the Han River and attacks Seoul, South Korea like Godzilla armed with really good special effects. Bong Joon-ho, the director of the serial killer thriller “Memories of Murder”, follows that one up with this straight up monster flick, a thrilling popcorn selling horror...

December 1st, 2006 | Read More

Horrorfest: 8, uh, 3 Films to Die For! / Reincarnation (2005), The Abandoned (2006), The Gravedancers (2006) Movie Reviews

I would guess that by now most of you caught the frenetic commercials for this unique horror “fest” that appeared to be a scary new ride at Great Adventure. The fest played at only 500 venues across the United States from Friday November 17th to Tuesday the 21st. I originally planned on seeing...

December 1st, 2006 | Read More

Casino Royale (2006) Movie Review / “007 and Counting”: The Life and Times of the James Bonds

In Michael Winterbottom’s “24 Hour Party People”, a film about the London music and club scene of the 1970s and 80s, the Tony Wilson character claims that it was the invention of broccoli that funded the James Bond films. Believe it or not, there is supposedly some truth to this: Albert...

November 23rd, 2006 | Read More

Beat the Bastard Down (2006) Movie Review

Jimmy Duke Traynor makes some bold claims on his website, including having made 114 movies in 12 years in all genres. If true, this would place him in the running for the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Marathon. He states that his filmmaking style is most often compared to Alfred Hitchcock and James Cameron,...

November 21st, 2006 | Read More