A train hurtles over the dead Earth, speeding across deep-frozen plains and carving a path around oceans of ice. The desiccated skeletons of cities blur by, as do old automobiles and abandoned ships; every once in a great while, the train shoots by a pile of huddled corpses, half-buried in the snow. The vague lumps […]
Erik Henriksen
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Spiritual Warriors
The making of a film that was never made
Dune is a boring book, and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s movies are torturously indulgent. That’s my take, anyway, offered after multiple failed attempts to appreciate both Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi novel and Jodorowsky’s surrealist classics The Holy Mountain and El Topo. Your mileage out of these things certainly varies, just as your mileage with Jodorowsky’s Dune will […]
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The Darkest Timeline
Going Back to the Future with the X-Men
Traditionally, X-Men stories need at least two things: Way too many characters, and a plot that doesn’t make much sense. In those regards, X-Men: Days of Future Past is a rousing success! By cramming in at least 4,000 mutants and a story that spans continents and decades, there’s a whole lot of gibberish going on, […]
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The Singularity Is Near
Behold Transcendence, a movie about Johnny Depp’s disembodied head
“Within thirty years,” wrote computer scientist, mathematics professor, and science fiction author Vernor Vinge, “we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.” Vinge wrote those words in 1993, and while the human era isn’t over quite yet, the idea of the singularity—the point when artificial […]
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Homeland Security
Captain America: Fixing America…one punch at a time!
How much credit should Captain America: The Winter Soldier get for being the first superhero movie to feel like it was written by Edward Snowden? Eh, probably not a ton: By the time its end credits roll, the creepy, real-world issues that the film touches on are neatly wrapped up, and thanks to its gleaming […]
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Better Than The Godfather III
Kermit & Co. return with Muppets Most Wanted
“We’re doing a sequel!” Kermit and Fozzie sing at the start of Muppets Most Wanted. “That’s what we do in Hollywood! And everybody knows that the sequel’s never quite as good!” Then either Statler or Waldorf chimes in: “How hard can it be? We can’t do any worse than The Godfather III!” And yes, thankfully, […]
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Checking In, with Baggage
The next stop on the Wes Anderson Tour: The Grand Budapest Hotel
‘The excellent phrase, “a glimmer of civilization in the barbaric slaughterhouse we know as humanity,” is used twice in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Those words could describe a few things. They could refer to 1) the Grand Budapest Hotel, a pink and white and pristine resort that, like a colossal, obnoxiously ornate gâteau, sits high […]
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Ghost in the Machine
RoboCop? More Like EmoCop! Ha!
Like a machine, we can take RoboCop apart, breaking it down to discrete components: Writing. Directing. Acting. Editing. And disassembled, just about every piece of 2014’s RoboCop remake is better than the corresponding piece of 1987’s RoboCop. But there’s a strange, beautiful alchemy that bubbles and hisses when one speaks of transcendent concepts such as […]
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Bratwurst Party
Going to war with The Monuments Men
“See, I’m not just a pretty face!” George Clooney says in The Monuments Men. And then, because he’s George Clooney, he smiles charmingly, and because he’s George Clooney, you think, “That’s right! You aren’t just a pretty face!” Because you’re George Clooney! Still, it’s sometimes easy to forget that Clooney—in addition to being a pretty […]
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Future Sex, Love Sounds
Falling in love with Spike Jonze’s Her
Old people love Village Inn. Love it. For starters, nothing about the place has changed since 1958—and at a certain age reliability itself becomes of chief importance. Over Christmas, I busted my fantastic 88-year-old grandmother out of her retirement home and then floored it to Village Inn. Where, over lunch, she leaned over her tomato […]