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Bronco Billy (1980): B
(Originally posted on 12/12/03) Clint Eastwood’s underappreciated Bronco Billy is an affectionate ode to the fading myth of the American West and the enduring power of the American Dream. Eastwood, in one of his first roles to examine his own Western icon status, plays the titular cowpoke, a former New Jersey shoe salesman-turned-sharpshooter. Billy is…
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Gerry (2002): B+
(Originally posted on 12/11/03) Gus Van Sant’s hypnotic Gerry is like the love child between Samuel Beckett, Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tar (who Van Sant admits was a huge influence on the film), and Van Sant himself circa 1985. Similar to the Polish Brothers’ inferior Northfork, Gerry is absolutely transfixing at one moment and unbearably boring…
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The Brood (1979): B-
(Originally posted on 12/9/03) David Cronenberg’s pleasurably twisted The Brood (1979) may be the most damning movie ever made about psychiatry. Wacko therapist Dr. Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed) is the preeminent practitioner of psychoplasmics, a revolutionary form of treatment in which the good doctor goofily role-plays with his unbalanced patients by earnestly pretending to be…
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Prison (1988): C-
(Originally posted on 12/2/03) As readers of this site will undoubtedly come to learn, I have an abiding fascination/obsession with horror films, good or bad. Case in point: this weekend’s Saturday night rental, Prison, a 1988 junk-a-thon directed by Renny Harlin (pre-Die Hard II, post-Nightmare on Elm St. IV: The Dream Master). Starring Viggo Mortensen…
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The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers 4-Disc set (2002): A
(Originally posted on 11/30/03) Earlier this year, I stated (in the pages of Stumped? magazine) that Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers paled slightly in comparison to The Fellowship of the Ring. However, after watching New Line’s four-disc extended version of the trilogy’s second installment, I now enthusiastically revise my opinion.…
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Once Upon a Time in America (1984): A-
(Originally posted on 11/17/03) Sergio Leone was a master of genre revisionism, and yet it's funny to find that few people characterize his final film, Once Upon a Time in America, as an example of such. A hallucinatory, melancholic meditation on grief, ambition, and betrayal, Leone's film purports to be a gangster film but, in…
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The Passion of the Christ (2004): D
(Originally posted on 3/12/04) Sick. That’s the simplest way to describe Mel Gibson’s medieval mutilation film The Passion of the Christ. Other ways would be: execrable, disquieting, and shameful. Gibson’s film, based on a mixture of the Gospels and the prophesies of 18th century mystic Anne Catherine Emmerick, dramatizes Christ’s last twelve hours on earth…
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Touching The Void (2003): B+
(Originally posted on 3/6/04) After four days of vigorously attempting to reach the bottom of Peru’s treacherous 21,000-foot tall Siula Grande, skilled mountain climber Joe Simpson returns to base camp with a blackened, frostbitten face camouflaged by streaks of blood, dirt, and saliva. His hollow eyes turned skyward in a look of exhausted disbelief and…
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Miracle (2004): B+
(Originally posted on 2/29/04) The prime marvel of Miracle isn’t the true-life victory of the 1980 Olympic hockey team – although the film’s recreation of that signature Cold War moment is plenty stirring – but rather Kurt Russell’s grizzled, vigorous performance as team captain Herb Brooks. Russell’s Brooks has an unflappable confidence (despite his horribly…
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The Station Agent (2003): B
(Originally posted on 2/8/04) A reclusive dwarf reluctantly finds a surrogate family and a chance for emotional liberation in Thomas McCarthy’s The Station Agent, a likeable drama that champions the cathartic power of overcoming self-imposed isolation. As the withdrawn train aficionado Fin — a sullen dwarf who moves to the New Jersey town of Newfoundland…
