In The Wrestler, Aronofsky gave the audience an entertainer past his prime, wallowing in the remnant glow of stardom, listening to the death-rattle din of a once mighty cheering section. In Black Swan, we are offered a glimpse at Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), the performer who teeters on the precarious apex of her prime, one younger, fresher […]
As I sat amidst a pile of shredded wrapping paper, finishing my last syrup-soaked pancake, I flipped on A Christmas Story, once again watching a child regaled with the dangers of firearms. He did in fact come close to shooting his eye out, and yet, there is still debate over the meaning of the Second Amendment. Clearly, […]
Dec22
The Fighter – A Novel Approach to the Boxing Genre, Also a PSA and the Pilot for The Lowell Shore
For the second time in two weeks, I will do my best to avoid puns during this post, particularly the ubiquitously uncreative “knockout” that has been used in most every review whether it be about Mark Wahlberg’s performance (really) or most often Chistian Bale’s. For starters, The Fighter could have been terrible, and there were so many […]
Admittedly, my reaction to the new William S. Burroughs Documentary A Man Within is probably rather skewed because of my familiarity with the Beat Generations and the authors therein. That said, the documentary itself was rather disappointing in that most of the information conveyed could have been located on Wikipedia or doing a random Google search. Objectively, […]
In a New York City subway, there are a number of ubiquities: the rats that scamper and scurry close to your feet, reminding you that if all 40 million of them ever chose to form a union and revolt, you would be in a bubonic heaven; garbage canisters that overflow and become less a receptacle and more […]
A review of Unstoppable is an exercise in avoiding train-related puns. I will do my very best to avoid noting whether or not the movie stays on track or goes off the rails, whether Frank Barnes (Denzel Washington) conducts himself in a manner appropriate for a man whose been “railroading for 28 years,” even though he could […]
Born to a cacophony of jeers at Cannes, Antichrist blurs the line between the beatific and profane, forcing the audience to witness violence beneath the sensual. Coiled around each other in rapturous fornication, He (Willem Defoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg) fill a beautiful, monochrome screen that casts the feminine face in a shade of light gray before […]
On a separate site, I commented on the recent glut of vampire films that have been produced, and if there’s one that you must see, it is Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In. This film intelligently and intricately captures the beatific vampire mythology while avoiding becoming a horror-flick driven by carnage. Unfortunately, Let the Right One […]
(“Chew on This” is Bill Coffin’s column on horror cinema, analyzing the some of best movies the genre has to offer, new and old.) It shall not end with a bang, but a whimper, so says T.S. Eliot. It is a notion curiously avoided by most post-apocalyptic film, which even when showing us a ruined, depopulated world somehow […]
While the big-bellied graybeards in both major political parities argue over who is more wrong and who is less right, the average American shrugs her shoulders insouciantly. Janey may or may not own a gun, but she is certainly weary of the sniping her elected leaders like to engage in. She is even less interested in what […]