Mid-last decade, An Inconvenient Truth brought a surprising amount of mainstream attention to global warming. Even Al Gore has expressed shock that millions of people would tune into what is essentially a power point presentation about a scientific phenomena. But what is additional groundbreaking about An Inconvenient Truth—the 2006 Oscar winner for Best Documentary—is that […]
Film
Posted inCulture
Cinco de Cinema
Mexican Cinema’s Renaissance
By the ’70s, as Hollywood kicked into high gear with commercial blockbusters like Jaws and Star Wars, to the south, Mexican cinema was going in another direction. What had been a promising, shining industry, both artistically adventurous and financially solvent, began to sputter. Many of the films produced in Mexico during the ’60s and ’70s […]
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Uncertainty Principle
Upstream Color Is Gonna Melt Your Brain!
PRIMER, the 2004 debut film of writer/director/editor/composer/star Shane Carruth, stands as one of the foremost Great Whatsits of independent cinema. Made for $7,000, it told its time-travel story in a fashion that was somehow both eminently sensible and entrancingly brain-croggling, with a resolution that all but commanded viewers to go home and get busy on […]
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Mostly Pain
Pain & Gain: Michael Bay makes a Coen Bros. movie
SOMEWHERE OUT THERE in an alternate universe, I like to think that the Coen brothers directed Pain & Gain. It’s a premise that seems ideal for them: the true story of a team of lunkheaded Florida bodybuilders who decide to kidnap a wealthy deli owner and hold him hostage until he agrees to sign over […]
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Water on The Brain
Four great movies about a dry topic
It is impossible to understate the primary role water has played in shaping world history, whether it is Lewis and Clark crisscrossing the western U.S. by river, or recognizing how cities and towns have been settled by gathering around rivers, lakes and other water sources. Perhaps the most violent expression of the centrality of water […]
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Class IV Horror Films
Don’t Say Hollywood Didn’t Warn You
In last fall’s beautiful Life of Pi, the main character is stranded on a raft with a cranky tiger. The story, adapted faithfully from the fantastically written novel of the same name, asks many questions about religion and kindness—but, really, the nagging question for Hollywood is: Why must every movie with a raft or canoe […]
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Medicine Show
42 turns the Jackie Robinson storyinto a string of feel-good homilies
At a pivotal moment in the new Jackie Robinson biopic 42, Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford) tries to console Robinson (Chadwick Boseman), who’s furious over the abuse and humiliation he’s required to endure stoically as the first black player in major-league baseball. “You’re medicine, Jack,” Rickey solemnly intones, trying to impress upon the […]
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Wheels Keep Spinning
On the Road Takes the High Road
Over the decades, if not instantly after the book’s publication, "On The Road" has been lionized as a canon of wild life; it is, after all, the lightning rod for the Beat Generation, pulling together an emerging bebop jazz scene, reckless youth and casual sexual encounters. The driving force of that story is a tale […]
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The Muse of John Hughes
A retrospective on the Hughes-Ringwald collaborations
Most actresses search for the role of a lifetime for their entire career; it doesn’t often plop itself in their lap three times in three years. This was the case for Molly Ringwald when John Hughes cast her in the a trifecta of memorable teen films, Sixteen Candles, 1984, Breakfast Club, 1985, and Pretty in […]
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Evil Dead Remake is Gory
But nothing cult-worthy here
In 1981, Evil Dead was released and capped a golden era of gore films, which had started eight years earlier with the release of Exorcist. It may be difficult to believe now—after those original films have been obscured by their ridiculous sequels—but The Exorcist was nominated for 10 Academy Awards in 1973, including Best Picture, […]
