start by admitting from cradle to tomb isn’t that long a stay

Black Book (Zwartboek): One of those movies that the DVD case doesn’t do justice to. The plot feels like a cliche: Jewish girl in the Netherlands, separated from her family during World War 2, dyes her hair blonde and seduces a German officer to aid the Resistance. She finds herself torn between her [...]

the horse he kept running; the rider was dead

(Note: as soon as I opened up IMDB on Monday evening to confirm some details about the movie below, I saw that its star, Edward Woodward, had died. A hell of a loss, though he left a full career behind him, including Becket, the TV series Callan, the original The Wicker Man and, of [...]

and they brought prosperity down at the armoury

The Dispossessed: One of those novels I wish I’d found sooner. Le Guin has a beautiful economy of language not often found in fantasy writers: making the terse but poetic choice, rather than bombarding a scene. The Dispossessed feels like an epic, though it comes out fairly slim.
And like all good science-fiction, the [...]

walk like a pimp, think like a macintosh

You’re A Very Nosy Fellow, Kitty Cat
These three things are true:
(1) Roman Polanski deserves to go to jail for raping a thirteen-year-old girl – not merely statutory rape, but coerced, drug-induced sex with a thirteen-year-old. The years he spent outside of the United States do not count as “time served” for his crime, since [...]

sommes nous les jouets du destin, souviens toi des moments divins

Le Samourai: Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai (1967) isn’t quite a samurai film, and it isn’t quite a gangster film. It tells a story that touches on both – three days in the life of Jef Costello (Alain Delon), a syndicate hit man who has no life outside of the job he’s hired to do. [...]

I know you want me; you know I want you

The Lion in Winter: yes, yes; a classic for generations; brilliant performances, pristine dialogue, etc. It’s a phenomenal movie. We know that. Rather than give it a review, which would be silly, I’ll attempt some critical analysis in the style of Todd Alcott (albeit not as well).
Here we go:
The Lion in Winter [...]

will.i.am, drop the beat now

Don’t I owe you some media blow? I feel I do.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Not bad, just aggressively mediocre. You ever have a friend who tells an unimpressive one-liner, giggling as he does, that you pretend not to have heard? So he repeats it, forcing you to either smile politely or say, “I [...]

and I owe it all to you

Patrick Swayze died Monday evening, succumbing to a long battle with cancer at the age of 57. This gives me an opportunity to go into detail about one of my favorite Swayze movies: Road House.
Road House is a great movie.
I enjoy Road House without irony or shame. While the fashions depicted [...]

in every lovely summer’s day

LiveJournal blogger The Ferrett has had a couple posts of late on the Oscars “In Memoriam” Montage featured at every Academy Awards ceremony. Actors who died in the previous year get a few seconds on screen, depicted in iconic roles, while grandiose strings swell in the background.

Ferrett asks an interesting [...]

and I’ve been putting out the fire with gasoline

Inglourious Basterds: I’m posting this on Labor Day in the hopes that no one sees it.
Quentin Tarantino has always approached films with the geeky enthusiasm of a comic book collector, rather than the affected aloofness of a film student. The movies he makes reflect that: a smorgasbord of styles, an epic assault on the [...]