Thursday, February 25th, 2010
Shutter Island
The style and manner of Shutter Island seems to leave the viewer with one of three reactions: a.) Exhaustion; b.) Elation; c.) Martin Scorsese, W.T.F.?! (The third option, admittedly, is not incompatible with the first two.) Where do I fall? Well, when I left the theater, neurons were firing like a blitzkrieg in my brain. [...]
4 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by elliott
Thursday, January 7th, 2010
Avatar
It seems a faux pas to review Avatar from any spiritual age older than 12. If my prepubescent self could be roused for comment, he’d probably say, “Gee whiz, those 3-D blue-cat people are totally rad!” But as a (slightly) older person, who views excessive promotion in the same way that that 12-year-old viewed cooties, [...]
3 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by elliott
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
Where the Wild Things Are
A few months ago, a conservative politician callously derided a liberal bill, claiming that its “empathy” was just a slippery slope to partisanship. One does not need to be partisan—or even political—to realize that empathy is the last bastion of civilized thought. If empathy becomes a “partisan” issue, rather than something generally recognized for its [...]
3 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by elliott
Thursday, August 27th, 2009
Inglourious Basterds
Quinten Tarentino’s Inglourious Basterds is about as accurate to Second World War history 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 only because it’s dreadfully arrogant of Tarantino [...]
8 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by elliott
Monday, August 17th, 2009
Forking Over “Spoon-Fed Cinema”
It’s not my custom to engage in this bloggiest of blog things to do, but I have to give kudos to my old mentor, A.O. Scott, for “Open Wide: Spoon-Fed Cinema,” a sagacious diatribe he published in the New York Times last week. Here’s a taste…
What kind of person constantly demands something new and yet [...]