Why do we feel blocked from our own laughter, sadness and outrage when we watch The Hoax? – This film has caught us as a society standing too close to the mirror.
Reviews
The Hoax – Too Close For Comfort
Also posted in Film Reviews Tagged Alfred Molina, Comedy, Drama, Richard Gere, The Hoax
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The Passion of Gary: 1982′s The Last American Virgin
The final moments of the forgotten classic The Last American Virgin are what elevate the picture from cultural curiosity to subversive brilliance.
The Danse Extraordinaire of Ballets Russes; Hard Candy, a Bitter Pill
The story of the Ballets Russes dance company is the story of the modern cult of celebrity.
Also posted in Film Reviews 1 Response
A Nightmarish Fling with The Last King of Scotland; A Dose of Twilight Sleep in Dreamgirls
Two Film Reviews by A. Mary Murphy
Also posted in Film Reviews Tagged Dreamgirls, Eddie Murphy, Forest Whitaker, Idi Amin, Last King of Scotland
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Back to the Beginning: Louis Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows
Criterion Collection presents journeyman director Louis Malle’s debut, a French exercise in noir.
Also posted in Film Reviews Tagged DVD Reviews, Elevator To The Gallows, Film Noir, French Films, Louis Malle, Miles Davis
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America Out To Pasture: The Good Shepherd
Is it possible to make an engaging film about a bureaucrat who carries a briefcase instead of a gun? Ask second-time director Robert De Niro.
Also posted in Film Reviews Tagged Angelina Jolie, CIA, Drama, Matt Damon, Robert De Niro, The Good Shepherd, William Hurt
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John Waters on This Filthy World
John Waters’ films have shown us the seedy, and revealed it as a mirror on ourselves.
Also posted in Film Reviews Tagged Documentaries, John Waters, Pink Flamingos, This Filthy World, Woody Allen
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The History Boys: Ahead of the Class
We’ve
all been there, The History Boys seem to say, no matter
where we’ve come from.
When Reagan Babies Fight Back! Another State of Mind
With punk today absorbed into the mainstream, can another alternative music culture appear? 1983’s Another State of Mind shows how it can be done.
Also posted in Film Reviews Tagged Another State of Mind, Documentaries, DVD Reviews, Music Films, Punk, Ronald Reagan
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Her Majesty, The Queen
Helen Mirren has the goods to be the queen – all the others merely players in her court.
Also posted in Film Reviews Tagged Biography, Drama, Helen Mirren, James Cromwell, Michael Sheen, The Queen
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Sex and the Chateau: Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette
What all of this adds up to is a biography of feeling, rather than fact, and a charming one at that.
Also posted in Film Reviews Tagged Biography, Drama, Film, Jason Schwartzman, Kirsten Dunst, Marie Antoinette, Rip Torn, Sofia Coppola
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Free Burning by Bayo Ojikutu
Moments of keen insight are buried beneath the misguided colloquial monologue that occupies the bulk of Free Burning.
Finding Woody: Allen’s Play It Again, Sam
1971′s Play it Again, Sam previews how Woody Allen would soon elevate his comic acumen into masterful studies of tragic romance
Idlewild: Act Like You Know
Trust OutKast to steal the familiarity out of a passage that has long-since been deemed cliché and to grant it new meaning.
Jandek on Corwood: When the Private is Public, and Still Unknown
This DVD profiles a musician whose personal work has continued to mystify, scare and inspire, with music written by a recluse who has truly been an outsider.
Also posted in Film Reviews Tagged Biography, DVD Reviews, Jandek on Corwood, Music Films
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The Departed: Less than Perfect, but All is Forgiven
In The Departed, nobody rides for free, and very few survive. And in this knock-down drag-out between a character and his environment, you should put your money on the neighborhood.
Also posted in Film Reviews Tagged Boston, Drama, Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Scorsese, Matt Damon, The Departed, William Monahan
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On the Road with Little Miss Sunshine
The ensemble cast of Little Miss Sunshine embraces the absurdity of family life, from Proust to pornography.
Also posted in Film Reviews Tagged Alan Arkin, Comedy, Drama, Greg Kinnear, Homosexuality, Little Miss Sunshine, Pornography, Proust, Steve Carell, Toni Collette
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The Illusionist: The Bamboozle has Captured Us
How often we become mindless sheep who find entertainment in the weirdest of places.
Also posted in Film Reviews Tagged Carl Sagan, Drama, Edward Norton, Jessica Biel, Magic, Paul Giamatti, The Illusionist
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Martian Dawn: Review of Michael Friedman’s Novel
Martian Dawn: A Novelby Michael FriedmanThe plot of poet Michael Friedman’s new novel, Martian Dawn, unfurls across Hollywood, a biosphere, a nameless space station, Mars, and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, all places with an absurdity quotient significant enough to render serious, dramatic conflict difficult to sustain. [...]
Empress by Shan Sa
As the sole woman to occupy a throne at the meeting point of heaven and earth, this extraordinary personage is perhaps a perfect fit for Shan’s grandiose writing style.
Also posted in Book Reviews Tagged China, Empress, Historical Fiction, Shan Sa, Summer Block
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The Week You Weren’t Here by Charles Blackstone
I read The Week You Weren’t Here while getting my nails done. I read it on the taxi ride home, glancing down at the page through patches of streetlight. I read it over dinner until my boyfriend asked me whether the book was good and I had no idea what to say.
Also posted in Book Reviews Tagged Charles Blackstone, Chicago, Novels, Summer Block, The Week You Weren't Here
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A Temple of Texts: Essays by William H. Gass
Throughout the book’s 25 essays, Gass is the champion—sometimes joyful, sometimes harsh—of intellectual fitness. For him, reading is a form of aerobics.
Social Justice Book Reviews: Denis O’Hearn’s Nothing but an Unfinished Song and Nancy Altman’s The Battle for Social Security
Denis O’Hearn’s recent book focuses on the life and death of hunger striker Bobby Sands.
Jumping for that Elusive Truth
Novelist Christian Bauman ponders the triumphs and tribulations of memoirists James Frey and Anthony Swofford and the lure of the publishing industry’s nonfiction fix
Also posted in Book Reviews, Essays Tagged A Million Little Pieces, Anthony Swofford, Christian Bauman, Dave Eggers, James Frey, Memoirs
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Welcome to the Vanishing Point: A Shadow in the City: Confessions of an Undercover Drug Warrior by Charles Bowden
O’Shay wants to retire from his job. He wants to walk away from what has become too easy for him—getting close to his enemies and then destroying them.
The Literature of Poker
Anyone with an email account or a television is aware that the popularity of the game of poker is at an all-time high.
Also posted in Book Reviews Tagged Andy Bellin, David Sklansky, Gambling, James McManus, Katy Lederer, Phil Hellmuth, Poker, Zen
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Twisted Love: A Review of Carrie Kabak’s Cover the Butter
The primary question on Katie’s mind is, how did she lose control of her life?
Review of Matt Mason’s When the Bough Breaks
Angie Kritenbrink reviews prominent Omaha poet’s latest chapbook
Review of Patricia O’Brien’s The Glory Cloak
Angie Kritenbrink reviews The Glory Cloak by Patricia O’Brien
Also posted in Book Reviews Tagged Books, Civil War, Historical Fiction, Novels, Patricia O'Brien, The Glory Cloak
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