neck deep in character As we all know, Earth started polluting interstellar space with television signals in 1939. Fast-forward 60-odd years now, into a reality for all intents and purposes…
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:
Resurrection
undoing golgotha As all good serial killer movies must, Resurrection opens on the scene of the crime, which fosters the necessary illusion that we’re starting at the same place the…
Read moreThe Green Mile
of mice and men In keeping with blockbusters like Titanic and Saving Private Ryan, The Green Mile is a story told by a participant now in the golden years of…
Read moreDetroit Rock City
fourhorsemen, one apocalypse When we think stadium rock the kneejerk association is the decadent hairbands of the 80’s. But there was a time when it was more pure. Or, less…
Read moreDogma
losing my religion Angels in the movies are nothing new. From Wings of Desire to A Life Less Ordinary. Similarly, the idea of Earth as a battlefield is older than…
Read moreCrazy in Alabama
unbewitched Crazy in Alabama is an ‘I learned a lot of secrets that summer’ movie, in-line with Stand by Me and all the Stand by Me pretenders. Which is to…
Read moreSleepy Hollow
lost in the age of reason Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow has traditionally been classed with children’s lit., and is subsequently invoked every Halloween along with Charlie Brown…
Read moreThe World is Not Enough
shaken, stirred, but never whipped In of the trademark opening stunts of The World is Not Enough, James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) rides a rope and a prayer down like ten…
Read moreDouble Jeopardy
half the fun Part of the appeal of cinema/narrative is the space between the scenes, the B we have to fill in to get from A to C. It’s about…
Read moreBicentennial Man
I, robot Stories tend to come in two flavors: either the hero is in some sort of jeopardy (emotional, mortal, existential, etc) the whole time, or the hero is on…
Read moreBeing John Malkovich
alice in hollywood [nj] The test of a fantastic story is whether or not you can interpret it in such a way that all the ‘fantastic’ stuff comes out as…
Read moreBringing Out the Dead
night & the city In movies about surveillance–say, End of Violence, Enemy of the State–the question quickly becomes Who watches the watchers. Similarly, with crooked cop shows (Bad Lieutenant, among…
Read moreEnd of Days
the usual suspects On one side, there’s Satan himself, still trying to murder the world, and on the other there’s an unbeliever, who just happens to be the only one…
Read moreBone Collector
calcium deficient It used to be enough just to have a serial killer on-screen, but then all the movies had a serial killer, meaning that if a movie wanted to…
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