I got ahold of the script for Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, and was mildly smug about it till I found out everyone’s read it already. Apparently it got leaked ages ago. Nobody tells me anything.
So what’s everyone saying about it? Basically, that it’s the coolest thing ever, or else it’s a fiasco of epic proportions. Nothing in between.
Me, I’m on the fiasco side at the moment. I tend that way in general. When I order a cup of coffee, I bet the coffee will be a fiasco of epic proportions, too. Though it often turns out to be okay.
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Film critic J. Hoberman got axed from the Village Voice today, and old-school cineastes are rending their garments in grief and crying “Oh the humanity!” Personally, I hate J. Hoberman and the film criticism he rode in on, and I…
While critics go through the farce of compiling their Best Films of 2011 lists, I’m working on my suicide note. Here’s the latest draft: Dear Hollywood Movies, When you find this note, I’ll be dead. And it’ll be your…
So is Sherlock Holmes 2: Game of Shadows a slovenly, slapped-together mess of a big-budget Hollywood sequel, like you might’ve heard? Oh, yeah! You bet it is! One of the slovenliest! Now ask me if I care!
Hugo is an overstuffed candy-box film of the type that some people really, really like. And if you add “A Martin Scorsese Confection” to the tag, everybody’s over the moon with how unexpected it is, this gift to mankind that’s…
You may have heard positive things about Margin Call, a new bankster suspense drama loosely based on the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers. I just saw the film, and my advice: Don’t waste your time and cash, not unless you want…
Well, jeez, I don’t know. I didn’t like Drive, but maybe you will. It’s one of those movies that pushes everybody out into the open, as far as their own biases and personal film hang-ups and all. How you feel…
Well, shoulda gone to see Warrior. It was a toss-up between Contagion and Warrior this weekend. Warrior‘s about the mixed martial-arts fighter with father issues—they say it has grown men sobbing into their popcorn. So, y’know, it might be good….
It’s Jesse James’ birthday today, September 5th. I mean the famous “frontier outlaw,” sometimes referred to as “America’s Robin Hood,” but actually an obnoxious Missouri sumbitch still venerated and romanticized by an addled public. In movies he tends to get…
There’s a British movie directed by John Landis called Burke and Hare coming out soon in America that’s pretty terrible. September 9th it comes out, and it’ll sink without a ripple. Even the publicity images are so lame, they seem…
Fright Night is a nice little genre film. I was pleasantly surprised. It’s getting pretty good reviews, but you know how you can’t believe those people. You have to go see for yourself. So I did, and sure enough,…
First, ask yourself the question, do you want to see a movie in which apes revolt against humanity? If the answer’s No, ask yourself these follow-up questions: 1) Why the hell not?, and 2) What’s WRONG with you?
Cowboys and Aliens is a big mess, sure, but I don’t know what everybody’s screaming about, it’s still better than most of the other maggoty offal they’ve been serving at the multiplex all year long. Apparently critics exhausted themselves praising…
American movies are dead and I’m attending the funeral. It’ll be a long-running funeral, I expect, with services that go on for years and years and years, and I’ll be there for most of ‘em. My beloved movies! After so…
American movies are dead, people. I know I’ve hinted before that American movies, collectively, were unwell, maybe even terminally ill, but that was in the still-hopeful past. Now it’s officially over. We can stop checking its pulse in the form…
It’s just a coincidence that I happened to watch a new cable TV show, Jon Benjamin Has a Van, about the same time I got around to seeing the movie Super 8, so now the two of them are…
Finally got around to seeing 13 Assassins—couldn’t face any of the new film releases this week—and I can’t tell you how soothing it is. It’s a reverent throwback to the great 1950s-’60s Japanese samurai films, and it’s done in neutral shades of gray and white and tan and black. Other than the copious blood spray, of course…
So if you’re interested in what a director does, or doesn’t do, go see Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. It’s a great film education watching Rob Marshall, the director replacing Gore Verbinski, wreck the Pirates franchise in one…
Bridesmaids is apparently a big deal. If we don’t all go see it, there will never be another movie made about women again. Or something like that.
Thor‘s not good. It’s so ungood, in fact, it caused New York Times film critic A.O. Scott to consider throwing himself under a bus. It seems Scott despaired over the realization that “Thor is an example of the programmed triumph…
