It was nine o’clock. The movie started at 9:20. I was at least 15 minutes away from the movie theatre. I’d have to move very quickly if I wanted to see every frame of Pom Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. I squeezed some Crest Pro-Health onto my Oral-B toothbrush. Scrubbed my unsponsored teeth. Rinsed and […]
Horrific events force us to channel the resulting anger into a visible, tangible object, one that visibly articulates our rage and anger by its existence, at times, regardless of whether or not the object of our antipathy is directly related to its cause. A case in point would be Johnny Frank Garrett, a Texas man accused of […]
When I heard that Takeshi Miike had a new movie out, I took the news with the same mix of anticipation and dread I would get were my Brazialian jiu-jitsu teacher to ask me to join him on the mat: I am going to get to watch a master at work, but by the time it’s over […]
Admittedly, when No Impact Man: The Documentary first popped up on Netflix, my first instinct was to watch it with the sole purpose of tearing it apart. Why? I’m not really sure. Perhaps I wanted to expose Colin Beaven as an advantageous entrepreneur whose desire to become an activist for a year better served his need to […]
Over the weekend, Hard Candy was cast into the “Not bad, but probably not going to watch this film again” pile, not so much because of the pedophile-based subject matter, but because – in general – anyone being castrated on screen freaks me out. Although, for the record, I am very anti-pedophilia. Despite being Salvador Dali’s worst […]
Admittedly, there’s little to be said about Taxi Driver that hasn’t been noted already. Scorsese’s 1976 look at slightly off-kilter cabbie Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is a noir-style classic that avoids flashiness and focuses on how the “filth” and “sleaze” in one’s environment can cause someone to “thank God for the rain to wash the trash off […]
Mar16
Confession of a Superhero – I’d Be Green Lantern to Make My Love of Rings More Socially Acceptable
Working for many years as a waiter and bartend in high-end Manhattan restaurants, I found myself wearing standard-issue ties by designers who turned on customers but left me indifferent. The required color schemes and brands sent me to various stores from Calvin Klein to Nautica, searching for the appropriate shade of blue that created an innocuous, harmless […]
A few years ago, I sat on a jury that was charged with deciding the innocence or guilt of an eighteen-year-old Dominican male who had been charged with second-degree murder, allegedly getting into an altercation over a gold chain inside a bar and then leaving, only to return with a pistol with which he fired four bullets […]
The main quandary surrounding the 2010 documentary Catfish is whether it is real or staged, but this is one of those documentaries for which the validity of the footage matters less than the message being conveyed. Sure, that sounds a bit hokey and conjures memories of James Frey being praised and then lambasted by Oprah, who bought […]
Of all the ways to seek revenge, immurement’s a good way to go, and this notion isn’t a new one. In Ancient Rome, a vestal virgin charged with breaking her vow of celibacy would be sealed in a cave with a small amount of food and water until the goddess Vesta to rescue her. Predictably, Vesta was hardly punctual, […]