Room 237 offers some interesting ideas about Kubrick’s The Shining, but provides very little substance to support its ambition.

 

 

Another tight race this year belongs to the Best Actor category, where Freddie Quell is pit head-to-head against Abraham Lincoln. If this were a real battle, I’d wager on Quell and his tendency to go for the legs, but in this contest, the battle is a bit harder to call. Both Lewis and Phoenix are notoriously anti-Hollywood […]

 

 

The incisor that slowly falls from the hockey player’s mouth, just after his blood forms Pollack-like droplets on the ice, casts Goon as a film that celebrates controlled violence. Puccini’s “Diecimile anni al nostro Imperatore” accompanies this scene, as do cheers from the crowd and smiles on the face of the enforcer who protected his team’s marquee […]

 

 

If nothing else, Hugo is a departure from the characteristic Martin Scorsese film. George Melies (Ben Kingsley) is not whacked by a bullet in the back of the head. The Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) does not pass out from smoking too much pot and forget to get rid of the getaway truck. No one is insulted […]