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H&K drop LSD with NPH in Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay
On the way to a hoped-for idyll in their spiritual home Amsterdam, our two beloved stoners Harold and Kumar take unintended detours through Cuba (as collateral damage in the War on Terror), Florida (where they drop trou’ for a “bottomless” party), Alabama (rudely interrupting a Klu Klux Klan klatsch), and Texas (whereupon they pass the…
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Malcolm McDowell checks in to Lindsay Anderson’s Britannia Hospital
Since we’ve last seen Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell) in O Lucky Man!, he’s moved to America and rediscovered his lust for power and profiteering. Now a member of the media (with no less than Luke Skywalker – Mark Hammill – on his crew), he has returned to his homeland on a mission to expose corruption…
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Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby fails to amuse
What was I thinking when I rented this turd? Oh yeah, that Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby might be a funny, entertaining diversion. One can’t always watch grim tales of abortion in Communist Romania or the death of a small town’s entire generation of children. I had long since tired of Will Ferrell,…
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Andrew Stanton’s Finding Nemo is childlike but not childish
Andrew Stanton’s Finding Nemo immediately preceded Pixar’s slightly more sophisticated collaborations with director Brad Bird, The Incredibles and Ratatouille. But despite being one of Pixar’s more overtly kid-oriented films, Andrew Stanton’s Finding Nemo is rife with anxiety and death. In the tradition of its spiritual ancestor Bambi, which also famously features a mother’s arbitrary murder…
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Daniel Day-Lewis is Natty Bumppo in Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans
This blogger is a longtime fan of director Michael Mann, counting Heat, The Insider, and Collateral among my favorite films. But I still can’t find much love for what is probably his most popular movie, The Last of the Mohicans, which seems to lack his typically intense focus and clarity. Based on the James Fenimore…
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Death of a BLEEPing salesman: James Foley’s Glengarry Glen Ross
For better or for worse, Glengarry Glen Ross is very pointedly set in a world of men. I believe only one woman so much as appears onscreen, in the background of one single scene. It’s no accident, oversight, or deliberate act of Hollywood misogyny to banish women from this 24-hour slice of the lives of…
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Malcolm McDowell tries not to die like a dog in Lindsay Anderson’s O Lucky Man!
Over the course of its truly epic length of 177 minutes, Lindsay Anderson‘s O Lucky Man! (1973) picks up the continuing saga of Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell) from If…. While If…. used a British public school as a metaphorical microcosm with which to satirize British class culture, O Lucky Man! widens its lens to take…
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But seriously, why so serious? Batman goes anime in Gotham Knight
Batman: Gotham Knight is a direct-to-DVD production from Warner Premiere, intended as a back-door prequel to the feature film The Dark Knight. Warner Bros. has tried this tactic before, and will again. 2003’s The Animatrix was a planned interlude in Matrix franchise, enjoying extensive involvement from creators The Wachowskis. Coming soon is a motion-graphics animated…
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Batman wants to be taken seriously in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight
I really wanted to like The Dark Knight. Director Christopher Nolan (also cowriter with brother Jonathan) and star Christian Bale have long proved themselves thoughtful, serious filmmakers, but if they have one common flaw it might be a terminal deficiency of levity. The Dark Knight inarguably has all the hallmarks of quality, intelligence, and craft,…
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Terry Gilliam throws the budget overboard in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Terry Gilliam’s mad, brilliant yarn The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a strongly anti-war fable to which every kid (and adult!) ought to be exposed. Like the best of its kind (including Ratatouille and Gilliam’s own Time Bandits), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen works on multiple levels and is accessible to all ages. It is,…
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Think Different: WALL-E
With the delightful WALL-E, Pixar continues its as-yet unbroken winning streak of instant-classic films for all ages. While my personal favorites are Brad Bird’s darker and more psychologically complex The Incredibles and Ratatouille, Andrew Stanton’s WALL-E is easily also one that will resonate decades hence with children of all ages (as the saying goes). Other…
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Malcolm McDowell plays public school war-games in Lindsay Anderson’s If….
If…. is the first in director Lindsay Anderson’s trilogy of films featuring Malcolm McDowell as the Mick Travis, whose misadventures continue in O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital. Everything I read about the trilogy repeats the same word to descibe Travis: “everyman.” On the evidence, I take this instance particular of “everyman” to mean Travis…