Thursday, April 21st, 2011
Source Code
12 Monkeys ÷ (Groundhog Day + Unstoppable) = Source Code > your average blockbuster. That’s a fairly simple formula, especially compared to the one supplied by the screenwriter, Ben Ripley; and if you don’t want to know what his is—well then I suggest you close this browser and refresh Facebook for the nth time instead. [...]
3 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by elliott
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
Iron Man 2
Iron Man 2 isn’t your daddy’s superhero movie. It’s your granddaddy’s. The steady torrent of wisecracks on the screen is indebted to the ’30s screwball comedies that accelerated newly audible dialogue to supersonic speed; and in this high-grade hybrid the screws are actual screws, and the balls energy-based projectiles launched from our hero’s metallic palm. [...]
6 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by elliott
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.) [...]
5 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by elliott
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
Moon
Duncan Jones’s Moon rises high in the sky, but twinkles somewhat faintly. It borrows heavily from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ridley Scott’s Alien and Blade Runner, and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris. It’s a variation on common themes, but themes that may not be common enough. And, compared to the others, Moon is exceptionally modest [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by elliott
Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
Frost/Nixon
In 1977, Richard Nixon agreed to his first televised interview since his resignation. It was granted not to an American journalist, but to an English talk-show host, David Frost. The erudite ex-president, desperate to improve his tarnished record for posterity, perceived that the inexperienced Frost would be a pushover; he thought he could chew through [...]