Tower Heist – From Sapiens to Simians
About six months ago, my block in Astoria was papered with pink NO PARKING signs vowing to tow anything that disrupted the filming of a…
Inside Job – The Dangers of Greed, Symbols, and Ratings
I can’t help but think that Inside Job won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary on the basis that director Charles Ferguson should have…
Notes on Genius – What Coppola Scribbled in the Margins of The Godfather
This is quite the find considering The Godfather is the best movie ever made and anyone who disputes that fact should be run over by a…
Best Prison Films – Or, Why We Root for the Bad Guy
The prison film might be the genre most antithetical to how we view heroes and villains. As opposed to films set in courtrooms where the…
I Love You, Phillip Morris – Hyper-Intelligence + Boredom = Criminality?
I Love You, Phillip Morris, exemplifies Jim Carrey’s decade-long transition from comedic goofball to charming leading man. In a way, Carrey has been emulating…
Life in a Day – A Movie in a Sentence
(image via AceShowbiz.com) Remember when the internet asked people to turn on their video cameras and record the events of a single day of their lives?…
The Change-Up – If There Were a Fountain, I’d Wish to Be in a Different Theater…Maybe
Confusingly, The Change-Up fluctuates between a decently acted film that boarders on endearing, and the dumbest, trope and cliché-ridden film that I’ve seen in a…
Burning Man – To Be or Not to Be a Terrorist
(image via Woodland Trust) 1995 offered numerous options for the American kid who preferred outrage over sloth. There were corporate scumbags in America to loathe….
Time of the Wolf – A Post-Apocalyptic Pre-Apocalypse Film
While it falls behind Funny Games, The Piano Teacher, Cache, and The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke’s Time of the Wolf is certainly worth a look…
Captain America – Perhaps It’s Best Not to Know Who Went Before Steve Rogers
In an earlier post, I tackled the connection between Steve Rogers’ transformation into Captain America as a government sponsored PED initiative, and while I still stand…