“Endearing” isn’t generally the first word that springs to mind regarding someone who kills Commie hordes for a living, but in Sylvester Stallone’s case, it somehow applies. I mean, don’t get me wrong—this isn’t to say that movies like Rhinestone or D-Tox don’t deserve to be buried in a lead-lined vault, but only to note […]
Andrew Wright
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Achtung, Baby
Beware! Uwe Boll Returns!
There have been many aspirants to Ed Wood’s tinfoil crown over the years—Joel Schumacher, Brett Ratner, whoever directed Snow Dogs—but no one has ever quite captured the master’s combination of earnest seriousness and complete filmmaking inability. Enter Uwe Boll. The two men share some striking surface similarities: both work with a core group of has-beens […]
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Spoiler Alert
Pssst! Jesse James Dies!
The much-anticipated revisionist western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, as evidenced by its chewily purple title, has a lot on its plate—too much, possibly. The result is a film with sustained passages of eerie, Malickian beauty (an early sequence involving a train robbery feels like one of the reasons that […]
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Oscar Bait
Paul Haggis Visits the Valley of Elah
After Crash launched its stunning sneak attack on the 2006 Best Picture Oscar, director Paul Haggis became the target of a serious backlash, with critics and moviegoers alike decrying his creation’s lack of subtlety, one-note characterizations, and sub-After School Special message. Blown office pools aside, what was perhaps most frustrating about the film’s success was […]
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I’m Staying Home
The Joys of Skinemax
As the commendably filthy Superbad makes its way to theaters, there may be no better time to salute the movies that first taught a sniggering nation to watch pay cable at 3 am. With respect to the holy trinity of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Porky’s, and Hot Dog: The Movie, here are a few […]
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Too Perfect
Stanley Kubrick’s Supreme Intelligence
There were no happy accidents on a Stanley Kubrick set: no mumbling extras, no unplanned shadows, no errant air molecules. Genius as his body of work undeniably is, the overriding impression (much like that of his current acolyte David Fincher) is that of a Supreme Intelligence watching ants stumble through increasingly chilly mazes. Stanley Kubrick […]
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Just Like Kubrick
And for Zodiac, That’s Both Good and Bad
Since the passing/ascension of Stanley Kubrick, no director has better conveyed the impression of complete and utter cinematic dominance than David Fincher. (To mangle that creepy old Outer Limits intro, he controls the horizontal, the vertical, and darn near everything else.) However, there can be a downside to such supreme control. Awe inspiring as the […]
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Faces in the Horde
Clint Eastwood Looks Across the Pacific
LOOKING BACK on the highs and lows of the previous movie year (out, out, damned Eragon), one of the biggest eyebrow raisers comes from Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers. Lauded in advance as a film that would shed new light on one of the most famous events in American history, Eastwood’s sprawling WWII epic […]
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Here There Be Draggin’
Stefan Fangmeier’s Boilerplate Fantasy Epic
Yea, verily, the Sword and Sorcery genre doth toe the line of self-parody more than most. Subtract the passion of Peter Jackson, or the bristly machismo of John Milius (Conan the Barbarian) from the equation, and you’re left with a bunch of hairy dudes rambling through the forest, talking about Kobolds. Eragon, the first in […]
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Dirty Deeds
Evil: Catholics. Pedophiles. You Know the Drill.
We’ve become inured—via reality TV and various Christopher Guest wannabes—to the conventions of the documentary format. (Montage of yearbook photos? Check. Deadpan first-person recountings that end with a nervous glance off camera? Gotcha.) So it can be a real shock when something emerges from the glut to pin our ears back. Deliver Us from Evil, […]
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Manic Nirvana
Jet Li Will Kick Your Ass… Then Hug You
Fearless, Jet Li’s much-ballyhooed farewell to the historical martial arts genre, serves as a rousing reminder of the actor’s glory days—when Li’s unbelievable physical grace enraptured an entire generation of jaded video store clerks. A semi-fictionalized recounting of the life of Chinese folk hero Huo Yuanjia, Fearless‘ plot allows Li to revisit many of his […]
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Static Cling
Pulse Suffers Duplication Errors
The whole Japanese horror film vibe has pretty much been absorbed by Hollywood by now, with chalk-white kids and malevolent appliances spilling out of all corners of the frame, and onto the resume of seemingly every young WB and UPN starlet in the process. Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 masterpiece Kairo, however, deals with concepts that […]