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The Calm Before the Jury
Jury duty – which was supposed to begin last Wednesday, but will now commence on Tuesday – has wound up lightening my recent work load. Nonetheless, some new stuff for this rainy (at least here on the East Coast) Friday. Today: The Invisible (Slant magazine) The Last Time (Slant magazine) Something to Cheer About (Slant…
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Dark Star (1974): B-
Set to the country ditty “Benson, Arizona,” the intro spaceship sequence of Dark Star is an apt career-opening moment for John Carpenter, whose directorial debut – like so much of his underrated genre output – is steeped in classic Western tropes. Nods to Howard Hawks, however, are here married to a tongue-in-cheek spoof of Kubrick’s…
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Astonishment-Free Wrap-Up
Making a derivative New Zealand version of Napoleon Dynamite is a bad idea. Meg Ryan’s plastic surgery was really unsuccessful. The farcical films of Francis Veber aren’t as cute as they think they are. In other words, this week’s regular collection of review links holds few surprises, aside from the fact that Vacancy – a…
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Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters (2007): A-
Die-hard Aqua Teen Hunger Force fans may have never expected the Cartoon Network animated series – part of the channel’s “Adult Swim” line-up, and a spin-off of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast – to make it the big-screen, but they’ll likely be the only ones prepared for the sheer, uninhibited insanity of Aqua Teen Hunger…
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Benny’s Video (1992): C
Anyone’s who’s seen a Michael Haneke film will know where Benny’s Video is headed from its opening VHS images of a pig’s slaughter. Modern alienation and a murderous act that defies social and moral law are right around the corner courtesy of detached and discontent Benny (Arno Frisch), a teenager with MIA parents, a successful…
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The Seventh Continent (1989): C+
The Seventh Continent’s static presentation of schoolgirls successively leapfrogging a pommel horse sums up the cinema of Michael Haneke: cold, structurally rigorous, and repetitive. Proving that his work’s formal and thematic lynchpins existed from his career’s outset, the Austrian director’s debut film concerns the inspired-by-real-events tale of a bourgeois family – husband Georg (Dieter Berner),…
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Old Bests New
All of the films reviewed this week pale in comparison to Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep, which I was fortunate enough to catch during its recently concluded, first-ever NYC theatrical run. My review of that 1977 masterpiece can be found below this post. As for the new stuff, well, Disturbia and Year of the Dog…
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Killer of Sheep (1977): A
Killer of Sheep begins with a father chastising his son for not protecting his brother from bullies, concluding the reprimand by telling the boy that it’s time for him to learn what life is really like. Such a lesson is blisteringly delivered by Charles Burnett’s 1977 masterpiece, which is finally receiving its first U.S. theatrical…
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Dead Silence (2007): D+
Dead Silence’s ghoul, Mary Shaw, is an undead ventriloquist who slays her victims by eating their tongues when they scream. In spite of all the yawning elicited by the film, there’s little chance such a fate will befall anyone unlucky enough to endure James Wan’s unscary movie, which somehow operates under the assumption that a…
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Happy Feet (2006): A-
A groovy, socially conscious triumph, the Oscar-winning Happy Feet stands at the very top of the 2006 animated kid’s film class. It’s no surprise to discover that George Miller – the man behind Babe and its stellar sequel – is capable of crafting children’s entertainment that’s at once playful, intelligent and modestly profound, but his…
