In a lot of ways, the Oscars and other awards shows are really the Ultimate Smackdown, although a little cluttered for our tastes, given our preference for mano-a-mano film-on-film violence. Still, now that the writers […]
If you’re looking for a film that will make you feel a little better about your own life, try either of these. They’ll also make you feel better about the “human spirit” and other noble thoughts but, basically, you will realize that all the crap you complain about every day really is just crap and that you should take a chill pill and try to realize how good things really are. Both “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” and “My Left Foot” which preceded it by almost two decades feature lead characters who are suffering through horrific physical challenges which make it nearly impossible for them to communicate but, because they are just as alive inside their brains as any of us and maybe more so, they rise above their fear, pain and sadness to communicate anyway. In the end, in both films, it turns out to be less about what they say than the fact that they said anything at all that is so inspirational.
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The Smackdown We can probably all agree that children should be protected from seeing and hearing and thinking about sexual contacts in the world around them and yet, sometimes they aren’t, sometimes they get a […]
The Smackdown The pregnancy genre is not a new one, but two of this year’s best movies have managed to present it in a new and novel way. Juno tells the story of a teenage […]
The Smackdown Win big, lose big. That’s the risk facing filmmakers seeking to do more than entertain. Joel and Ethan Coen take chances and the results are always interesting, sometimes great (Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, […]
The Smackdown It’s easy to admire virtue and nobility. Possessing either can be difficult. Maybe that’s why our movies seem to feature five Norman Bates and ten Gordon Gekkos for every George Bailey or Atticus Finch. […]
The Smackdown American journalist and satirist Ambrose Bierce defined a lawyer as someone “skilled in the circumvention of the law” and he presciently wrote this a century before either of our two films hit the […]
The Smackdown Since a lot of romantic comedies have a wedding somewhere in the film, the reasoning must go, why not have an entire movie about them? From “The Wedding Singer” to “Wedding Crashers” to […]
The Smackdown Few events test character like a crisis close to home. A pair of recent low-key films (both now being mailed to Academy members around Hollywood) address the issue of family members succumbing to […]
Both the hotly-promoted “The Bucket List” and the below-the-radar “Bubba Ho-Tep” feature a pair of geriatric geezers (one white, one black) undertaking adventure in the twilight of their lives in a search to give meaning to what went before. Both films are entertaining, but can the big budget, major studio offering with an “A List” cast and a big name director trump a small, independently-made gem based on a Bram Stoker Award nominated short story? Can Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman best Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis? Is gallimaufry globetrotting more poignant than fighting giant roaches in Nacogdoches? Will the Hollywood-based screenwriter from NYU’s film school hold his own against the Mojo Storyteller from the Big Thicket in East Texas? In short, will “The Bucket List” command as fervent and as loyal a following as “Bubba Ho-Tep?” Will the questions ever stop…
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