The greatest virtue of PAPA: HEMINGWAY IN CUBA is that it was filmed in Cuba just after it was re-opened to the United States. It still looks the way it did over 50 years ago, when the story is set, which not too long before the United States embargo, protesting Castro’s revolution, went into place.… Read More »
LAZER TEAM
LAZER TEAM is a cheerfully cheesy homage to great and not-so-great sci-fi movies of days gone by. With a goofy sense of humor, a droll use of irony, and whipsmart comedic instincts, it tells the time-honored tale of misfits finding the greatness within themselves, while also saving the earth from evil alien invaders. It takes as… Read More »
Amy Schumer is No TRAINWRECK
Turning gender roles neatly on their heads, Amy Schumer has created a screwball comedy of considerable substance. Taking sure aim at the abomination of the formula rom-com, she satirizes not just the genre, but the state of contemporary single-hood. Starring in a script of her own devising, she is fearless, relentless, and completely unapologetic as the titular hot mess, also named Amy, with commitment issues and a healthy libido.
DOPE is Genius
DOPE is a provocative blend of gritty realism, gentle compassion, and piercing social satire that is so unlike anything that has come before that its maker, Rick Famuyima, may have just invented a new cinematic sub-genre in the spirit, and brilliance, of the Coen Brothers’ FARGO. Boldly venturing into issues of identity, class, gender, sexuality,… Read More »
A Choppy CHAPPIE
CHAPPIE is a cross between Pinicchio and ROBOCOP with a dash of DISTRICT 9. That last is unsurprising because CHAPPIE is the brainchild of Neill Blomkamp, and many of the elements at work in that earlier film about the meaning of humanity are at work in this one. The battleground is still South Africa, Blomkamp’s… Read More »
BIGGER STRONGER FASTER
Everything you thought you knew about steroids is wrong. Everything you suspected about the demoralizing effect that the media’s obsession with perfection has on our psyches is true. BIGGER STRONGER FASTER not only makes the case for both those propositions, it also demonstrates how they are inextricably entwined in the fabric of the American consciousness.… Read More »
LOVE GURU, THE
The best moment in THE LOVE GURU is right at the beginning. It’s when Stephen Colbert first appears as a deranged sports commentator. Cling to that moment, because even when he pops up again, it won’t be the same. It will be after this revolting excrescence in which he is appearing has infected your eyes… Read More »
THE WOMEN
Some films are very much the product of a particular time. They reflect the sensibilities, the anxieties, and the dreams of that time and of no other. The remake of THE WOMEN is that kind of film. Unfortunately the zeitgeist it represents is that of the early 1970s, attempts at snappy dialogue hearkening back to… Read More »
TRANSFORMERS — REVENGE OF THE FALLEN
One day, MichaelBay will fulfill his destiny and perhaps his fondest wish and make a film that is nothing but big explosions. With TRANFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, he has come very close. This benighted cacophony is a painful blend of overproduced action and shameless exposition. The sense of fun found in the original is… Read More »
SURROGATES
Ever since 18th century philosopher/ mathematician Rene Descartes first dreamed up the image of the ghost in the machine to explain the relationship of mind to body, the image has held potent sway with popular imagination. The concept itself, where the body ends and the person begins, is a question that many philosophers have addressed,… Read More »
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