Question 1: What’s the state of the American horror film? Steve Barker: There are two popular formulas in horror right now: the super gory torture movies (Saw, Hostel) and the documentary style where things pop out at unexpected moments and scare the shit out of the audience (Paranormal Activity, Apollo 18). Neither of these forums is all that original. […]
In one sense, Bridesmaids is a refreshing film that moves the lens from perpetually adolescent man defying the onset of adulthood found in any recent cinema affiliated with Judd Apatow to the perpetually adolescent woman facing the same fate. At the same time, it’s plot is tired and, amidst a few poignant moments at the end between […]
The eighties are alive in 2012, or at least, the memory of the eighties is. If you’re not up for a comedic imagining of police officers infiltrating inner city schools, check out Jason Segal’s latest or Adrien Brody’s turn as a widget educator, momentarily changing lives in an interchangeable occupation. If you’re up for an adventure, or […]
Mar09
Weekend Arena: 3/9
This week, Disney launches another tentpole film, Elizabeth Olsen gives audiences eighty-eight minutes of tension, a couple of white folks put salmon in an unusual place, a couple of professors exchange identities, and Eddie Murphy tries his hand with teenagers in his most recent, not-funny role. John Carter: Andrew Stanton, director of Wall-E and Finding Nemo, makes […]
Undefeated chronicles the 2009 season of the Manassas Tigers, a high school football team in North Memphis – also known as the perennial whipping boys for the rest of the state. Facing a fourteen-year losing streak, the team is taken over Bill Courtney, a volunteer head coach / lumber salesman in his quest to lead them to […]
Mar07
Welcome to Nowhere (Bullet Hole Road) — A Savage Journey into the Heart of the American Road Movie
Characteristically, the road movie is a catharsis played out on the big screen. Mounting frustrations of quotidian, pedestrian existences crescendo into a need to break away from all that is familiar. At the same time, the road movie is a contradiction as characters escape the familiar by utilizing the uber-familiar and search for the unknown by means […]
Beginning in 2008, frugality became the new luxury. The bling that was in a few years prior became excessive and the winnowing of credit card debt became the fashion of the moment. People began going green less out of compassion for the environment, and more of a means to limit their electric and gas bills. As we […]
Mar02
Weekend Arena: 3/2
February had a moment, like Chronicle and Undefeated, but most of it fell flat. March is the month were things start to get a bit better, a bit more bigger budget, and a few more stars. This first week, we get a look at a dissipating rocker, a non-sparkly Robert Pattinson, a liberal-agenda cartoon character and Robert […]
In a number of portrayals of women passing as men, gender-bending is a method of establishing an identity. In Albert Nobbs, the diminutive, soft-spoken, ginger-haired Irish hotel butler (Glenn Close) becomes a man, in part to escape the brutality of men in a previous relationship, but more for anonymity. Albert makes few social statements through her disguise; rather, […]