I magine if Harmony Korine (“Gummo” & “Spring Breakers”) and Gaspar Noé (“Enter the Void” & “Irreversible”) decided they wanted to remake “Of Mice and Men,” “Dog Day Afternoon” and “After Hours” during an acid trip at a rave in the 1970s, but then figured they would just combine them into one movie and have […]
Film
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Oceans 7-11
Soderbergh makes a triumphant return
D o you have a critic you hate so much that you instantly know what your opinion of a film will be just by yours always being the instinctive opposite? My least favorite film critic is Rex Reed, who has actually walked out of movies in the first 20 minutes and then had the gall […]
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Blood on the Snow
Wind River chills to the bone
I ‘m not sure if this is a description someone has used before, but if not, I would like to coin it now: In describing films like “Fargo,” “A Simple Plan,” “In Order of Disappearance, “The Snowman,” “Wind River” and the rest of the genre of red blood on white snow in a darkly humorous […]
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A Post-Apocalyptic Primer, in Honor of the Great American Eclipse
Do you know where your pillows are?
L et me get this out of the way up front: I don’t think we’re gonna die in a hail of nuclear fire from North Korea, and the eclipse is going to be over sooner rather than later. With that said, I also have some pretty good ideas for my post-apocalyptic future… just in case. […]
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Child’s Play
Annabelle and Chucky Sittin’ in a Tree
W hen I first heard they were making “Annabelle 2: Electric Boogaloo,” I rolled my eyes and sighed…something I don’t like to do. I try not to be cynical about a movie before I’ve seen it, because it’s lazy and counterproductive to the actual deconstruction and criticism of art. If we all chose to avoid […]
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Summer In the City
“Detroit” exposes another dark corner of American history
“D etroit” is the best movie I’ll never watch again. Just like “The Passion of the Christ” or “Enter the Void,” the film is designed to make the audience feel something deeply, as opposed to being something one could remotely define as “entertainment.” While “Detroit” feels like something important that everyone across the country should […]
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There Are Other Worlds Than These
The long awaited Dark Tower fails miserably
I n the movie, “Contact,” Jodie Foster sees alien life for the first time and utters one of the best lines in movie history: “They should have sent a poet.” That’s how I feel after watching Sony’s adaptation of Stephen King’s eight-book series, “The Dark Tower.” I have neither the vocabulary nor room to tear […]
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Open Minds
Food Evolution takes on the GMO debate
G oing into “Food Evolution,” I thought I had an idea what the documentary was going to be like, based on the name. Documentaries about food sustainability, organic farming, biodiversity and eating healthy are popular right now, and with Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Sequel” a few weeks from release, I figured this would be another […]
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Blonde, James Blonde
Le Carre meets Le Chiffre in this spy-stravaganza
I ‘ve spent the last month or two rewatching every single Bond movie ever made. There are three things Bond does in every one of his movies: 1) He fights bad guys. 2) He drinks a martini because he’s a fancy dandy and 3) he very aggressively finds someone to have sex with until he […]
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The Pets Are Alright
Don’t worry, no animals were harmed in any of these movies
I can watch people get shot, blown up and serial killed all day long, but as soon as something bad happens to an animal…I’m out. I’ve still never seen “Marley & Me” because I know how it ends and I’m not a masochist. For the Pet Issue my normally snarky self was thinking about writing […]
