Eye-catching stylishness and cool fight scenes have almost become the barometers by which a revenge film is measured in contemporary pop culture, rather than the protagonist’s quest for vengeance. Take Kill Bill, Quentin Tarantino’s bloated homage to all things cinematic which he adores, from chambara movies to kung fu flicks to spaghetti Westerns; the aesthetic … Continue reading
Duncan Jones is quickly making a reputation for himself as a director whose films don’t easily lend themselves to open and casual discussion. Between 2009’s Moon, one of the most impressive debut features of the last decade, and Jones’ latest offering, Source Code, a writer is hard-pressed to perform even a cursory review of the … Continue reading
If we’re left with but a single takeaway for Peter Jackson’s 2010 effort, The Lovely Bones, it’s that even a visionary director of Peter Jackson’s caliber has opportunity to soil their sheets with the lights on. Make no mistake, The Lovely Bones— based on Alice Sebold’s novel of the same name– is nothing short of … Continue reading
JL over at the Couch Potato Club has done me the honor of name-dropping me and subsequently hooking me up with my very own Versatile Blogger award. This isn’t some blog-breaking, game-changing prestige, which I frankly appreciate; rather, the Versatile Blogger award’s intent is to spread some link-love across the blogosphere and introduce our various … Continue reading
I don’t typically participate in blog memes, mostly because deadlines aren’t really my thing– this is a leisurely blog, updated when I deign fit to update it, after all, and I have so many other things to do with my time that setting dates for myself generally doesn’t work out. But some memes are just … Continue reading
Let’s kick this review off with a digression: I didn’t hate 2009’s Watchmen, per se, though I found it to be a massive failure that failed to truly honor Alan Moore’s essential 1987 graphic novel deconstruction of the superhero archetype which shamelessly* embraced application of style over the nurturing of substance. Zack Snyder, a director … Continue reading
I never said that this series would be pretty, did I? I’m sure that someone out there is questioning what kind of person I must be for a movie like Ichi the Killer to be a defining and important part of my growth as a cineaste, which, I suppose, is fair enough to ask even … Continue reading
To describe Japan’s Takeshi Kitano (or Beat Takesi) as anything other than “versatile” is outright unthinkable. While frequently known and celebrated for his forays into crime dramas with a series of films involving cops and yakuza to his credit– Brother, Sonatine, Hana-bi, Violent Cop— Kitano has displayed an unwillingness to be pigeonholed as a participant … Continue reading
Watching 2009’s A Single Man out of sequence with 2010’s hit The King’s Speech puts Colin Firth’s performances in both in a different light and certainly removes the possibility of prejudicial viewings of the latter. I can say with absolute confidence that Firth could have won his Oscar for either of them, and that I … Continue reading
Battle: Los Angeles feels very emblematic of how a film which simply fails to totally live up to its promise and expectations can be more disappointing than a simply outright awful one. Jonathan Liebesman’s fourth feature length movie isn’t terrible by any stretch of the means, but lacking in all areas of substance Battle becomes … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 