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…
Posted on: May 30th, 2011 | Comments (17)
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…
Posted on: May 21st, 2011 | Comments (31)
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.
Posted on: May 15th, 2011 | Comments (20)
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…
Posted on: May 8th, 2011 | Comments (47)
Insidious is a rotten movie getting unaccountably good reviews in some quarters. For instance, Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly says: “Insidious is a haunted-house movie that has some of the most shivery and indelible images I’ve seen in any horror…
Posted on: April 3rd, 2011 | Comments (18)
Rango is this crazy animated movie about a lizard in a state of existential crisis. His tale is narrated in song by a mariachi band comprised of four owls, and they sing about his imminent, heroic death throughout. Rango keeps…
Posted on: March 5th, 2011 | Comments (24)
Unknown isn’t good, but that doesn’t matter these days. Movies are so rotten lately we’ve all lowered our standards out of sheer desperation. The new standard for movie-going is, “Can I risk it? Will I hate it so much it’ll…
Posted on: February 20th, 2011 | Comments (21)
Listen to the Radio War Nerd podcast [subscribe here] with guest Gunnar Hrafn Jonsson of Iceland Public Radio on the massacre in Orlando and how online Islamic State jihadis are dealing with battlefield defeats and the shrinking caliphate. Subscribe to Radio War Nerd through the show’s Patreon page.
The political establishment’s racist, authoritarian reaction to the 1992 LA riots—blaming broken black families, massing cops and troops, and Ron Paul’s advice to his family on how to kill black “animals” and get away with it…
When the fourth of July rolls around, you’re supposed to think of, I don’t know, the Constitution and backyard cookouts like in old Chevy ads—but for me, it’s really Gettysburg we’re celebrating. Greatest battle in American history. But the battle,…
This article was first published in The eXile on February 19, 2004. Haiti popped into the news again, and I decided it was time to tell the whole military history of the place. It’s got to be the most amazing,…
This article was first published in The eXile on November 13, 2002. Reading the leaks from Washington, you can tell we’re gearing up to do something in Yemen. A little regime-change action maybe, a sideshow to the big production number in…
This article first appeared in The eXile on February 21, 2008. FRESNO, CA — OK, let’s talk hardware for once. I love the hardware, always have; the reason I don’t talk much about it is that what we’ve got is…
This article was first published in The eXile on November 27, 2002 Ever wanna go to Kathmandu? Not me. I was never a hippie. The hippie types always talked about heading off to Nepal for spiritual enlightenment, but it sounded…
One thing you notice more and more the longer you hang around this sleazy world is the way mainstream types can’t admit to the obvious. They always have to act shocked. So it’s like, “Bond Mogul Convicted of Fraud”-oh, the…
When the fourth of July rolls around, you’re supposed to think of, I don’t know, the Constitution and backyard cookouts like in old Chevy ads—but for me, it’s really Gettysburg we’re celebrating. Greatest battle in American history.
