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The Grand (2007): B
Unlike Incident at Loch Ness, no knowledge of Werner Herzog’s career is required to fully appreciate screenwriter Zak Penn’s sophomore directorial effort The Grand. Respectfully sending up the professional poker tournaments that crowd ESPN’s various networks, Penn’s loose, semi-improvised story takes place at the titular contest, where a variety of colorful characters compete for a…
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Bangkok Dangerous (1999): C+
While Bangkok Dangerous proves that Danny and Oxide Pang know how to deliver kinetic, visually arresting action, it also establishes their too-intimate familiarity with the work of John Woo and Wong Kar-Wai, two Hong Kong auteurs whose style and tropes are aped mercilessly throughout this hitman-with-a-soul saga. Deaf-mute Kong (Pawalit Mongkolpisit) takes out inner fury…
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Tropic Thunder (2008): C
Big budget, big stars, big concept – surprisingly little payoff. Tropic Thunder delivers extravagant set pieces and a raft of superstars, yet somewhere along the line, director/co-writer/star Ben Stiller forgot to concoct material that might elicit more than a mild chuckle. To an even greater extent than Zoolander, Stiller’s latest double-duty effort in front of…
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Linkage
August is winding down, meaning that the studios are dumping their garbage into theaters before the fall awards season begins. As a result, this latest collection of reviews is short on positivity… Now Playing: Death Race (Slant magazine) The Longshots (Slant magazine) The House Bunny (Slant magazine)
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Inside (2007): B
Inside might have been a horror classic if it didn’t, at key intervals, diffuse some of its tension through easy-shortcut storytelling that calls undue attention to the director’s manipulative hand. Four months after she (but not her baby’s daddy) survived a car crash, Sarah (Alysson Paradis) prepares on Christmas Eve to deliver her child the…
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Death Race 2000 (1975): B+
At his peak, B-movie producer extraordinaire Roger Corman had an uncanny knack for melding cheap thrills with serio-comic social commentary, a gift feverishly on display in Death Race 2000, director Paul Bartel’s (Eating Raoul) action-packed saga about a future-America transcontinental car race in which participants receive points for running down citizens. Giddy, tawdry, and vigorously…
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Link Quickie
I’ve been so busy finishing up reviews for this blog – including my latest ones, found below, for Hamlet 2, Rogue and Sukiyaki Western Django – that I haven’t had time to do a link round-up. Until now, that is. Now Playing: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Slant magazine) Mirrors (Slant magazine) The Sisterhood of…
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Sukiyaki Western Django (2008): B+
Takeshi Miike takes cinematic homage to its absurd extreme with Sukiyaki Western Django, a tribute to Spaghetti Westerns – and, specifically, Sergio Corbucci’s seminal 1966 Django – that boils the genre down to its base phrases, scenarios and iconography. In this typically gonzo Miike creation, the situation is archetypal (a mysterious cowboy arrives in a…
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Rogue (2007): B+
Despite having one of the decade’s finest horror films (Wolf Creek) on his résumé, Greg Mclean couldn’t nab his sophomore effort Rogue a full theatrical release. Given the assortment of crap made by nobody hacks crowding multiplexes each week, that alone is something of a travesty, though making matters even worse is the fact that…
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Hamlet 2 (2008): C
Boasting a title more amusing than anything contained in its 90 minutes, Hamlet 2 concerns a failed actor-turned-high school drama teacher in Tucson, Arizona who, in order to save the school’s theater program, stages the titular story. The doofus in question is Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan), an untalented moron obsessed with inspirational-classroom movies whose obliviousness…
