Occasionally, my roommate will allow me to talk about movies with him. It’s with the same wariness that I allow him to talk about baseball stats with me. He loves movies; I love baseball. But not nearly to the obsessive, almost sick degree of the other.
Usually, it begins with a teaser commercial for an upcoming [...]
Did you think your song and dance and your superstition would help you, Eli? I am the Third Revelation! I am who the Lord has chosen!
Our culture has always been preoccupied with religion. When I say ‘our culture,’ I mean both American culture and human culture. But I will not attempt to address religion from [...]
Judges, lawyers, cops, politicians. They stop bringing dope into this country, about a hundred thousand people are gonna be out of a job.
American Gangster is about war profiteering. This is not its only theme, but it certainly is one. It addresses this theme directly on two levels and indirectly on a third level. The film [...]
Released in 1998 and nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (Warren Beatty, Jeremy Pikser), Bulworth is a film about a politician in the 1996 elections running for the Senate in California. Dismayed by horrible stock market moves, a cold wife, and a (comically) repetitive campaign and political life, Senator Jay Bulworth decides to [...]
Released in 2006 and receiving no Academy Award or Golden Globe nominations (surprisingly missing out on a special effects nom), 300 is about a band of Spartan soldiers who decide to stand against the million-man march of the Persian army as it attempts to conquer Greece, mainly by cutting off limbs in slow motion. King [...]
Released in 2007, Shoot ‘Em Up is about…well, it’s the story of…
It’s basically the most explicit demonstration that all you need to sell a film is violence and sex, and I just can’t tell if it’s a brilliant commentary and tongue-in-cheek homage to action films or if it’s just a stupid, stupid movie. Honestly, I’m [...]
