The year 2010 was not the most exciting for film, as it seems as though there were more misses than hits, with the seemingly inexhaustible supply of mediocre comic book adaptations, paint-by-numbers romantic comedies, and the kinds of oiled-up action movies that appeal to a certain crowd (he knows who he is) but, for the [...]
Read More Animal Kingdom, Ben Medelsohn, David Michod, Guy Pearce, J.D., Jacki Weaver, James Frecheville, Joel EdgertonOf the many things that George Clooney and I have in common, and the list grows longer year after year, the one that People magazine hasn’t commented on as much is our shared love of cinema of the 1970′s. We have tended to show our appreciation for this era in different ways; Clooney by starring [...]
Read More Anton Corbijn, blu-ray, crime, drama, DVD, George Clooney, J.D., Paolo Bonacelli, R, The American, Violante PlacidoSo, there I am, quietly minding my own business, providing the kind of customer service to the clientele that has my fellow employees looking upon me as some sort of titan of the industry, when I am approached by the Overseer of the Newsletter. “We need you to write a review of the Will Ferrell [...]
Read More action, blu-ray, comedy, crime, DVD, Eva Mendes, J.D., Mark Wahlberg, Michael Keaton, PG-13, Samuel L. Jackson, Steve Coogan, The Other Guys, The Rock, Will FerrellMurder is a nasty business. Few writers have understood this as well as pulp legend Jim Thompson, whose storytelling in the 1950′s revealed a writer of rare abilities, one with genuine literary skills who was also able to illustrate the depths of human debasement without lapsing into the sort of parody which typified ‘True Detective’ [...]
Read More blu-ray, Casey Affleck, crime, drama, DVD, J.D., Jessica Alba, Jim Thompson, Kate Hudson, Michael Winterbottom, Ned Beatty, R, The Killer Inside Me, thrillerSo much has been written about Orson Welles in the last twenty years that it almost feels as though he were a character created by Scott Fitzgerald, a wonderful idea of something worth aspiring to in an attempt to explain a lost moment of time when the United States still felt new. The legend of [...]
Read More Claire Danes, drama, J.D., Me & Orson Welles, PG-13, Richard Linklater, Zac EfronIt’s grim up North. This, in a nutshell, is the philosophy of novelist David Peace, a native of Yorkshire in England, whose series of books about crime and corruption are the base for this excellent trilogy, originally broadcast on the BBC. Peace is a progenitor of pulp, and obvious student of American crime writers Jim [...]
Read More Andrew Garfield, BBC, blu-ray, crime, David Morrissey, David Peace, drama, DVD, J.D., Mark Addy, Paddy Considine, Red Riding Trilogy, Sean Bean, thriller, Tony GrisoniGoodness, the British certainly do hate Tony Blair… But, I’m getting ahead of myself. There have been any number of political thrillers released in the last few years, the culmination of the ‘lost years’ of America, where the Bush administration, and its allies in England, have come in for a right kicking over any number [...]
Read More blu-ray, drama, DVD, Ewan McGregor, J.D., Kim Cattrall, Mystery, Olivia Williams, PG-13, Pierce Brosnan, Roman Polanski, The Ghost Writer, thriller, Tony BlairAs the American film industry drifts further into a sort of retarded infantilism–week after week of superheroes, television show remakes, stunted 80′s nostalgia for things that weren’t any good in the first place–it‘s important to remember that, on the fringes, there is still a filmmaker or two out there who is willing to crack open [...]
Read More Ben Stiller, blu-ray, comedy, drama, DVD, Greenberg, Greta Gerwig, J.D., Jennifer Jason Leigh, Noah Baumbach, R, Rhys IfansCinematic War fatigue, a syndrome afflicting most Americans over the last six years that involves the understandable symptoms of choosing escapism as entertainment over ‘realism’, has claimed many victims at the box office. Many of these films weren’t necessarily worthy of much attention, anyway, either due to their ideological stridency (‘War is bad’), or jingoism [...]
Read More action, Amy Ryan, blu-ray, Brendan Gleeson, drama, DVD, Green Zone, Greg Kinnear, J.D., Matt Damon, Paul Greengrass, R, thrillerOftentimes, when a successful book is transferred to the big screen, the complaint is that the essence of the source material has been lost in translation due to any number of factors, legitimate or not. It’s not unreasonable; so many novels are unwieldy, overstuffed with minor characters and illogical narratives, that it’s usually unnecessary to [...]
Read More adventure, blu-ray, Charlize Theron, Cormac McCarthy, drama, DVD, J.D., John Hillcoat, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Michael K Williams, R, Robert Duvall, The Road, thriller, Viggo Mortensen