Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
Ninja Assassin
In its first few minutes, Ninja Assassin has some of the most creative dismemberments that you’re likely to have seen; and then, disappointingly, the satirical blade goes dull. In fact, it takes a considerable amount of time before another weapon is unsheathed, and you start to wonder why the hell we’re in Berlin—or why the [...]
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Thursday, September 24th, 2009
District 9
In Alive in Joburg, a film that was only six-and-a-half minutes in length, Neill Blomkamp toyed with an ingenious idea. Aliens are marooned in South Africa, and come seemingly in peace; but when they start moving into human neighborhoods, the authoritarian apartheid government locks them away in concentration camps. They’re treated as subhuman and forced [...]
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Thursday, September 10th, 2009
The Hurt Locker
The press has fallen in love with The Hurt Locker. For those of us who came of age during the combat-movie drought that wars like Iraq tend to engender—and who are typically disinclined to browse that genre at Blockbuster, besides—The Hurt Locker is like a first kiss. But I hesitate to stretch the metaphor, a.) [...]
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Thursday, August 27th, 2009
Inglourious Basterds
Quinten Tarentino’s Inglourious Basterds is about as accurate to the Second World War as Kill Bill was to the present day, and while watching the movie I bought the conceit because this is Tarantino territory, and I was entertained. But, in retrospect, his revisionist history is offensive not so much because it’s dreadfully arrogant of [...]
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Sunday, November 30th, 2008
Quantum of Solace
Quantum of Solace is a schizoid movie. There’s a definite tension between the material and the intentions of the filmmakers—should the hero be Bond or badass? The question is never resolved, but one needn’t care; the movie was thoroughly enjoyable. Quantum is saved by its odd combination of professionalism and incompetence.
This is the first actual [...]