Thursday, September 22nd, 2011
Contagion
Right before the lights went down and Contagion got underway, my buddy asked if this was a bad movie for us to be sharing popcorn at; and for the first few minutes, my answer was a withering “Uh-huh….” Steven Soderbergh lingers a few extra seconds on a much-fingered bowl of peanuts at a bar in [...]
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Thursday, May 26th, 2011
The Other Guys
I’m almost a year late to the party, but my friend’s mother recently got The Other Guys on Netflix—and, well, I’m glad we had nothing better to do that night. After slagging on Will Ferrell recently, and on “mainstream comedy” for awhile now, I felt obligated to endorse this film. It opens on an overt [...]
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Thursday, May 12th, 2011
Win Win
When was it decided that wrestling was a sign of sensitivity? It was implied that the troubled teen of The Kids Are All Right might be sending his brah a love letter every time he held him in a headlock. Now, in Win Win, in defiance of the sum of modern hyperconsciousness—and codes that have [...]
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Thursday, May 5th, 2011
Mildred Pierce
Todd Haynes’s H.B.O. miniseries Mildred Pierce reintroduces us to two of the most loathsome characters to have ever letched their way across the screen. The first offender is Monty Beragon (Guy Pearce), a well-born weed whose family tree is no longer blooming with legal tender; and the second is Veda Pierce (played by Morgan Turner [...]
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Thursday, December 30th, 2010
Black Swan
Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler was near-great. It may have been diffuse around the edges, but it had Mickey Rourke for its beating heart—and Marisa Tomei just out of his reach. Released to theaters between President Obama’s election and inauguration—and on the heels of the economic crunch—it gave an “ordinary” American workingman the chance to do [...]