shyamalan’s way In Speilberg’s Always, the dead hang around for awhile, tying up the loose ends of their lives. In Jacob’s Ladder, the dead hang around in a similar manner,…
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:
Mystery, Alaska
hoosiers on ice In 1976 Rocky said it once and for all: \\\”I can’t beat him. But that don’t bother me. The only thing I want to do is to…
Read moreAmerican Beauty
looking closer Most movies willingly yield to even minimal analysis–fall apart in your hands, into a set of easily identifiable conventions, character types, etc. Not so with director Sam Mendes’…
Read moreThe Minus Man
simple math Movies about serial killers are typically from some detective’s POV as he and we try to figure out just who the serial killer is. Why is it like…
Read moreMystery Men
a league of their own The trailer didn’t lie: Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush) has captured Captain Amazing (wholesome Greg Kinnear), leaving a superhero-sized void in the skies of Champion City….
Read moreEyes Wide Shut
high infidelity The structure of Stanley Kubrick’s swan song Eyes Wide Shut is older than cinema itself, but hardly new to it: an everyman type encounters boundary situation X, which…
Read moreInstinct
people in the mist In comic books, when you go live with the animals for a couple of years you come back a super-hero; in Instinct, that’s half the case:…
Read moreArlington Road
blown away When someone’s paranoid in a movie and no believes him or her, that paranoia will be justified. It’s cliche. Similarly, when the neighbors are perfect, they aren’t. In…
Read moreNotting Hill
love in the uk Notting Hill opens very British, very proper, with William Thacker (Hugh Grant) introducing himself with a casual voice-over, then taking us on an establishing stroll through…
Read moreThe Haunting
peripherally envisioned What gets you in a haunted house movie are the quiet moments, when you expect something to happen. A good haunted house movie incubates this, stacks up a…
Read moreThe Astronaut’s Wife
not a space odyssey The X-Files taught us that alien colonization won’t be loud like Independence Day, but insipient, like Body Snatchers, Puppet Masters, all that. More They Live than…
Read moreAmerican Pie
the last american virgin In Happiness everything revolved around a young boy’s ejaculation, and we all kind of looked away and accepted it. In American Pie, happiness is ejaculation, only…
Read moreAustin Powers II
in the absence of shag In Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, set in the 90s, Austin’s arch-nemesis Dr. Evil is laughably stuck in the 60s, demanding a million dollars…
Read moreIron Giant
sputnik with legs The dilemma for all the ‘tin men’ in literature/media has always been Do I have a heart or not? From Oz to Star Trek to director Brad…
Read more