Click here for the flashback interview with Scott Mann for FALL. It is always with just a bit of trepidation that I approach sequels. Can it recapture the magic that made the original such a success that the powers that be felt a sequel was worth the time and the money? Can it be worth… Read More »
MUTINY
I have never made a secret of my abiding belief that Jason Statham makes anything he’s in better. There is something about his brand of unstudied cool that has a mystique all its own with none of the showy bravado of a Brando, or the ironic remove of McQueen. I bring this up because for… Read More »
SEND HELP
The fruits of entitlement face off with workers controlling the means of production in Sam Raimi’s scathingly brilliant, and wickedly funny, take on gender politics and economic power, SEND HELP. Sure, we’ve seen this scenario before in THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON, SWEPT AWAY (the Wertmuller version, please), and most recently in TRIANGLE OF SADNESS, which owes… Read More »
LOVE AND BANANAS — Lek Chailert, Ashley Bell, and John Michael McCarthy Interview
Click here to listen to the interview. The first thing I told subject Lek Chailert, filmmaker Ashley Bell, and producer/co-writer John Michael McCarthy when I spoke to them on May 25, 2018, was that I almost passed on their documentary, LOVE AND BANANAS, because I can’t bear to see animals suffer. Even when it’s a… Read More »
ONG-BAK: THE THAI WARRIOR
ONG BAK: THE THAI WARRIOR has several things going for it that make it a worthy addition to the martial arts oeuvre. There is the particular style spotlighted, Muay Thai, a variation that involves the use of knees and elbows to drive home the action with an intriuguing kind of violence. Mostly, though, there is… Read More »
Belen Atienza, Sergio Sanchez & Juan Antonio Bayona Take on THE IMPOSSIBLE
Respect was a word that came up often as I was talking with the filmmakers who brought THE IMPOSSIBLE to the screen on October 31 2012. Based on the true story of one family’s harrowing experience trying to survive in the aftermath of the Christmas Day tsunami in Thailand, the film was shot on location… Read More »