Somebody stick a fork in Tim Burton; he’s done.
Dark Shadows proves it’s about time he retired and took up a hobby. I’d suggest still photography. He’d be terrific at that—he still has a great eye for his personal fetishes, like unearthly pale, beautiful girls with huge eyes and small mouths, and ornately dressed male fops with crazy hair, and campy Olde Worlde architectural flourishes. Dark Shadows works far better as a bunch of still photos than it does as a movie. Trust me on this. Just look at the pictures below, and don’t go to the movie—there, I just saved you $10. Don’t say I never gave you nuthin.
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If you’re one of the few dozen people in the world who hasn’t seen The Avengers yet, I’ll tell you the best way to take it in. Hit a matinee screening in a theater filled with kids—especially very small roundheaded…
Don’t know if you’ve ever seen a mumblecore film. Probably not, if only because the term “mumblecore” is so twee and horrible, it would instinctively repel you. It’s a millennial American film development, around for quite a while now but…
Today’s burning moral question: Is it bad to enjoy watching a big-screen entertainment featuring teenagers hunting each other for sport? Answer: Oh, I dunno. Points to be made on both sides. How big is the screen? Bigger ain’t necessarily better…
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…
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:
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…
