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 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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The Smackdown Here are two films from director Mike Nichols which, even looking in the rear-view mirror of history, have a lot to say about the human cost of invasion in Afghanistan and a national […]
The Smackdown Blood is thicker than water means, of course, that family counts more than anything else. Here are a couple of movies where the blood is also bloodier. From Cain and Abel to Michael and […]
The Smackdown If you think your own family life is rough and you’re looking for a way to feel better about yourself, man, do I have a couple of films for you. Both come from […]
The Smackdown Movie afficionados already know what the public at large has yet to discover: Ryan Gosling is one of the great actors of his twentysomething generation and, like those who have come before him, […]
The Smackdown “The thing that won’t die, in the nightmare that won’t end.” The tagline was created for 1984’s Terminator, the career-making hit for Arnold Schwartzenegger and writer-director James Cameron — but it also describes […]
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