In BODY OF LIES Hollywood continues its attempt to examine the War on Terror while still making it palatable for a mass audience. It so very desperately wants to be this year’s SYRIANA, and for the first hour or so does a credible job of exploring the complexity of current events before succumbing to the… Read More »
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
While Ridley Scott was busy filling THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, his saga of the Crusades, with sweeping vistas of warfare, oceans of soldiers bent on carnage, and forests of siege engines gliding purposefully towards embattled Jerusalem, he forgot to add a story that would engross an audience. Or even work up a ripple in interest.… Read More »
THE DEPARTED
With THE DEPARTED, Martin Scorsese has taken a good film, the Hong Kong minor classic INFERNAL AFFAIRS, and remade it into a movie that is as bloated as it is bland. Gone is the dramatic tension of a slick action flick, gone is the suspenseful psychological subtext that pondered the nature of identity, subsumed into… Read More »