ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny The Jaws structure works because it’s simple: oversized shark enters isolated community, begins feeding, has a few good kills and chase scenes, then is in turn chased…
Read moreArchives: Reviews
Back in 1999, I had this beautiful idea that was supposed to get me into movies free, forevermore: I’d write enough reviews to join the Online Film Critics Society. So, this is me, doing that. Except? No matter how many times I applied, I always got told that my reviews didn’t count, they weren’t really reviews, what was I doing, who’d I think I was, all that. This site back then was Cinemuck.com, even—it was very Geocities-era. Anyway, here they are, in all their . . . glory? I haven’t looked at them for twenty-plus years. Guessing I got some stuff way wrong. But? I may have lucked into a good line or two, too:
Final Destination
chronicle of a death foretold Emily Dickinson started one of her poems off ‘Because I could not stop for death / He kindly stopped for me.’ James Wong’s Final Destination…
Read moreMission to Mars
houston, we have a problem Aliens taught us that in space, no one can hear you scream. Mission to Mars teaches us something a little closer to home: that in…
Read moreWonder Boys
skin deep Professor Tripp’s (Michael Douglas) life is complicated, complicated enough that it takes a solid third of Wonder Boys just to get the guy properly introduced. We’re talking real-time…
Read morePitch Black
don’t let the sun go down on me Pitch Black operates on the same premise as Asimov’s \\\”Nightfall\\\”: when the sun goes down, the calamity starts. In \\\”Nightfall,\\\” however, what…
Read moreEye of the Beholder
the monitor and the monitored Eye of the Beholder is a movie in which many secrets are kept. Most importantly, we never get a clear idea why the Eye’s (Ewan…
Read moreScream 3
the final cut: slash and learn The third installment of any horror movie franchise is itself something of a zombie–a dead thing being forced to walk around, a re-animated corpse,…
Read moreSupernova
tom & jerry in space A good eighty-percent of science fiction in the movies owes everything to horror. Yes, Alien was great, but structurally, what’s the real difference in it…
Read morePlay it to the Bone
going the distance We all love the end of Rocky III, where Rocky and Apollo face each other on the canvas not as friends, but as fighters. It’s both violent…
Read moreAny Given Sunday
all the longest yards Any Given Sunday opens tight on the ball, pre-snap, and if it wasn’t in widescreen we might think it’s really just Sunday afternoon again. But then…
Read moreThe Talented Mr. Ripley
single white male These Pacific Heights type stories are usually told from the victims’ point of view, which serves to make the ‘villain’ more threatening, as he could pop into…
Read moreMagnolia
chubby rain Traditionally, a commercial movie, no matter how experimental it pretends to be, will nevertheless cling to at least one dramatic requirement: the introduction, early on, of a problem,…
Read moreMan on the Moon
the act behind the man Man on the Moon’s big draw isn’t Andy Kaufman. That would be too big a gamble, as his comedy takes a refined sense of humor…
Read moreRandom Hearts
menage-a-quatre In Eyes Wide Shut–which Sidney Pollack also had a bit part in–a husband overextends himself trying to deal with his wife’s betrayal. Random Hearts isn’t so different, insofar that…
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