For a film about mixed martial arts, it would have been cool of Gavin O’Connor’s WARRIOR to demonstrate some mixed martial arts. But maybe I’m projecting my own priorities onto a film more interested in showing us, ad nauseam, how this great whatsit is provoking the audience. (more…)
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Episode 184 – ATTACK THE BLOCK
Want to understand the recent Riots in England Dear Listener? Than you must must must start with Joe Cornish’s brilliant sci-fi kitchen-sink action dramedy ATTACK THE BLOCK.
APOLLO 18: The Truth is Out There
Gonzalo López-Gallego’s APOLLO 18 isn’t just a fun potboiler but an unlabeled conspiracy tape hiding in the wrong VHS sleeve, a straight-faced, paranoid political thriller spawned by the unholy union of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and Wikileaks. (more…)
COLOMBIANA Can’t Stop
As CONAN THE BARBARIAN represents the nadir of chaos cinema with its unfocused camerawork evoking nothing but a lazy director, Olivier Megaton’s COLOMBIANA represents its potential, finding purpose in the rapid cutting and manic energy that defines the End of Cinema. (more…)
Episode 183 – RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES / WORLD ON A WIRE / THE KILLING
It’s almost too much action for one show Dear Listener: Gareth and I disagree more than a little bit on RISE OF THE PLAENT OF THE APES, cannot disagree for reasons that are obvious about Fassbinder’s WORLD ON A WIRE and explore a novel take on Stanley Kubrick’s THE KILLING.
Summer Festivals
Los Angeles is not known for its film festivals. There are no Golden Bears, Silver Lions or Palme D’ors awarded to obscure auteurs whose careers rise and fall on a handful of impossible-to-get-into screenings presided over by the cinematic elite. There are no A-List celebrities conducting full press Q&As. (more…)
Episode 182 – From the Member Archives: IRON MAN 2 / TALES FROM THE SCRIPT
It’s that hot and parched month of August Dear Listeners – and so we release a Treasure From the Archives, (let us not refer to it as a repeat), our thoughts on the action comic IRON MAN 2 and the horror of trying to make a living as a scriptwriter documentary TALES FROM THE SCRIPT.
RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES: You say you want a revolution
I’ve never felt cognitive dissonance like reading my Twitter feed this week—but maybe that was all the cold medicine—seeing nonstop (and counterintuitive) raves for Rupert Wyatt’s blockbuster RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (more…)
Contributor Crosstalk 2: Back in the Habit (April-June 2011)
BRANDON NOWALK: Hello, and welcome to Contributor Crosstalk 2: Back in the Habit, the quarterly look back at the good, the bad, and the weird cinema offered us below-the-liners. This episode: April-June, or Planet Hollywood’s journey from SOURCE CODE to CARS 2. Oof. (more…)
