The Smackdown Hollywood loves to write about therapists who are more screwed up than their patients. Maybe that’s because most Hollywood writers and directors are in therapy and want to feel better about themselves, I […]
The Smackdown Not every film gets exhibited in a movie theater. And not every film that misses out on that opportunity is bad. Sometimes they can be good, or funny, or just plain awesome, and […]
The Smackdown At the turn of the century, Wonder Boys snuck into our cinematic consciousness through its sheer quirkiness and excellent casting and still gets a lot of DVD screenings in many homes. Later in […]
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 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 […]
The Smackdown Even middle-aged guys deserve to find true love, right? What’s refreshing about the newly-released “Dan In Real Life” and the emerging classic “About A Boy” is that they both are written for stars […]
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, […]
May 2011 Update: Obama in Ireland. His trip was largely overshadowed by the Arab Spring coupled with his provocative foreign policy fracas over Israel. So, oddly, in this year’s context, Ireland seems like a place to get away from politics. Ireland, however, is actually a country that takes its politics as seriously as its music. There are two recent films that have told very tough tales of Irish history. Here is our original Smackdown.
Every St. Patrick’s Day, people worldwide celebrate the Irish by wearing shamrocks, marching in parades, even drinking green beer. It can be a ton of fun, to be sure, but the Ireland of fairly recent history was a very serious place where political battles were decided in revolution and civil war. Our Irish Movie Smackdown pays tribute to those days by putting a couple of films in the ring together that tell the story. These two classic films of Irish-rebellion — The Wind That Shakes the Barley and Michael Collins — were made a decade apart. Back in the Clinton years, Liam Neeson starred in the title role as Irish rebel turned Free Stater, Michael Collins, and a few days before St. Patrick’s Day in 2007, Cillian Murphy played a rebel on the other side of the bloody Irish Civil War in The Wind That Shakes the Barley. They each tell stories about the years when Irish eyes were definitely not smiling… […]
The Smackdown We all know (from bitter experience) that being a kid is no picnic. Here are two movies that tell us that being a writer of kids’ books isn’t much easier AND both manage […]
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