“The Campaign” is a different kettle of fish puke. There’s a weirdly unfunny flatness permeating the entire film: flat writing, flat jokes, flat directing, and above all, Zach Galifianakis’ non-presence, a flatness so flat it’s like convex comedy…
Posted on: August 13th, 2012 | Comments (56)
I can’t do Best Film lists. Somebody recently asked me to—a former student—it was sweet of him and all—but I can’t. They’re so embarrassing. You no sooner put down a title than you feel like an idiot—really, this is the…
Posted on: August 6th, 2012 | Comments (97)
Dear Reader,
This whole review’s a spoiler, so if you’re not prepared to handle an all-spoiler review, take a hike. (You know the drill.)
Yours in despair,
Eileen J.
Posted on: July 22nd, 2012 | Comments (146)
The Amazing Spiderman’s a hit, and I just saw it, and I can’t remember it. Which is a GOOD thing, in its way. That’s what loud CGI nonsense is FOR.
Posted on: July 9th, 2012 | Comments (56)
Peter Greenaway outdoes his own imbecility by “proving” to art critics that 17th Century Rembrandt painting foretold the appearance of Dutch immigrant-bashing Teabagger Geert Wilders
Posted on: July 7th, 2012 | Comments (29)
“Why are you sending me Charlie Manson quotes, Ames? Are you threatening me?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was quoting Mitt Romney’s own personal Yoda or that the thought of an upgraded version of Joseph Smith taking control of the White House should scare the shit out of secular humanists and liberal elites, who, so far, have dismissed Romney’s foundational ideology, treating it with parody or scorn, if at all.
Posted on: June 26th, 2012 | Comments (42)
By now I’m assuming you’ve seen Prometheus, and we can talk freely. If not, beat it, because I’m telling all, plot-wise. Prometheus starts out gangbusters, so beautiful and ambitious that you have to wonder how Ridley Scott is going to…
Posted on: June 10th, 2012 | Comments (94)
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…
You’re gonna have to give me the weekend off. I moved yesterday. To a new town, new job. Trusted Google Maps to get me there. Don’t ever do that. That’s what I think must have happened to that famous lost…
Something’s been going on in Syria for a while now. I’ve already written about the Deraa protests as an example of the big role guerrilla funerals play in irregular war, but it’s time to look at the more general prospects…
Years ago I got an angry email from somebody claiming to be in one of the Baltic militaries. Whoever he was, he wrote in grammatically perfect English so he just had to be from Northern Europe. We can’t talk English…
Before I confess how wrong I was about a big issue, I’ll give myself a little pat on the head for being right about a much smaller deal, the Afghan jailbreak I talked about two days ago.
There are times when you look back and wish you’d had the courage to say what you were thinking. With me it’s a spotty record: Sometimes I do, but more often I wimp out. I wish now I’d said the…
You can’t keep a good Talib down. Or in jail, apparently.
Last Sunday I was grumbling about how there are so many great books about war and not that many great war movies. That got a lot of readers lobbing in their suggestions for good war movies. One reminded me that…
