Bobby Liebling, the prodigal vocalist of the seminal metal band Pentagram, is a dichotomy, evoking the rock star persona of difficultness and stubbornness as well as the desire to be wanted and loved. Both of these personalities share one quality: the need to take each to the extreme. Pentagram has been around for thirty years, yet, in […]
Aug31
Weekend Arena: 8/31
Kind of a slow weekend coming up, unless you’re going through Tom Hardy withdrawal and The Dark Knight Rises is no longer playing in your area. If you’re sick of all-things Dark Knight, you could check out a few thrillers: one based on exorcism, the other on a strange urban legend. The Possession: I know that our […]
This week is a litmus test for whether we believe Joseph Gordon Levitt can be a Nightwing- / Robin-type superhero. It’s also time for another horror movie that promises to be better than those released in January, but probably no better than any Idle Hands, Ring 3 endeavor. If you’re hoping for the possibility of critical satire, check […]
Paul Haggis often has a way of beating his audience over the head with cultural rhetoric, particularly if we look at Crash as an example. At the same time, a film like Million Dollar Baby – while ostensibly about pugilism and then euthanasia – is actually much more about our cultural obsession with violence, but the hypocrisy […]
The departure from Paul Greengrass’ Bourne series to writer-now-director Tony Gilroy’s is marked and, at times, successful. Whereas the Bournes of Damon were shaky and shot with whirlwind hand-cam cinematography, The Bourne Legacy is slow and meticulous. Like his predecessor, Aaron Cross’s (Jeremy Renner) strikes and punches are amazingly quick, but the rest of the film subdued. […]
More mystical phenomena occur to young boys Timothy Green and Norman. The former is a literal flower child; the latter is a young boy who can talk to dead people, but presumably without the creepily lingering shrink who needs a doctor of his own. If you’re up for killing a few fifths of vodka and blowing $14, […]
While this might be blasphemous to some, I must admit that the original Red Dawn (1984) is lost on me. A précis of the film would be: Soviet forces invade the United States, and the Wolverines, a group of teenagers led by Patrick Swayze fight back against what Ronald Reagan deemed “the evil empire” only a bit […]
Gavin O’Connor’s Warrior looks like the latest entry into the pugilist genre, but its true theme is focused on the sublimation of violence. Admittedly, there are undercurrents of dysfunctional family tropes that ebb and flow throughout the rise of fighters and brothers Tommy (Tom Hardy) and Brendan Conlon (Josh Edgerton). A rift in their teenage years separated […]
Aug10
Weekend Arena 8/10
This week, we have the fourth installment of an underrated film franchise, a time to place bets on whether of not The Campaign will become more about ticket sales that comedy, and the return of Spike Lee to his directorial roots. The Bourne Legacy: The re-emergence of Jason Bourne reminds me, first, that the Bourne franchise is underrated, […]