When I think about Sin City, the memory is of watching a cartoon. Not merely a striking approximation of the graphic novel on celluloid, but animation; it seems as if what I saw involved no live actors.
Closer is a work – and here I mean both the play by Patrick Marber and the 2004 movie adaptation he wrote – that might be an imposing piece of art if it weren’t so fucking stupid.
Our dark thrillers have been reduced to highly stylized snuff and torture affairs, trying to give audiences cinematic pleasure exclusively through the casual presentation of the suffering of others. I’m not terribly surprised, and I’m less troubled by Saw itself than the fact that it didn’t bother me.
Mr. 3000 is the Dave of sports movies. Which is to say: It’s a good-hearted fantasy that sacrifices accuracy of detail in its chosen arena (in this case, baseball) in the interest of being emotionally resonant.
The 2004 version of Dawn of the Dead is as derivative as you’d expect and still manages to be, surprisingly, pretty damned good.
Zach Braff of TV’s Scrubs wrote, directed, and stars in Garden State, and I’m guessing people much younger than I think it is, as the kids say, “the shit.”
Aborted and brief writing on Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Big Fish, and The Barbarian Invasions
The 10 greatest actors of “our” generation? (Whatever “our” means.) According to GQ, those great arbiters of cinema, it’s these boys: Nicolas Cage, Jim Carrey, Don Cheadle, Russell Crowe, Benicio Del Toro, Johnny Depp, Leonardo, DiCaprio, Gael Garcia Bernal, Clive Owen, and John C. Reilly. It’s a very pretty list, Cage and Reilly excepted. (Via Salon.)
There’s nothing wrong with Ray that a little less hype couldn’t fix. As biopics go, it’s pretty good. Jamie Foxx is convincing as the iconic Ray Charles. Writer James L. White and writer/director Taylor Hackford employ a clumsily expository flashback structure that actually pays off beautifully at the end with a startling and unexpected moment of transcendence and vision. Two and a half hours clip by briskly. And there’s plenty of Charles’ music.
Birth is the perfect antidote for anybody who thinks reincarnation is a romantic notion, allowing for a reunion with the spirit of a loved one who has died. By mining the practicalities of the situation, the movie becomes a rare work that humanizes and seeks to understand the effects of reincarnation instead of merely employing it for cheap horror or cheesy romance.
