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Ask the Dust (2005): C-
For over three decades, Robert Towne has dreamed of filming Joe Fante’s Ask the Dust, a pulpy yarn about writing and racial tensions in Depression-era Los Angeles. On the basis of his Colin Farrell/Salma Hayek-headlined cinematic adaptation, it’s a dream that should have been left to die. Stale, sterile and hopelessly silly, Towne’s fourth directorial…
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Academy Award-amania
At the urging of those many fans who enjoyed my Golden Globes running diary – well, okay, it was just one person, and it was via an email to my wife – I’ve returned with a similar by-the-minute log for the 78th Annual Academy Awards. The glitz! The glamour! The vapidity! And annoying red carpet…
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Back in Action
My first week back from vacation was a busy one. And as the five largely negative reviews below prove, it wasn’t a particularly fun one either (save for the pleasure I always get from watching Milla Jovovich do her sexy sci-fi badass thing). This Weekend: 16 Blocks (Slant magazine) Ultraviolet (Slant magazine) In the Near…
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Scarlet Diva (2000): B
Asia Argento’s Scarlet Diva is like the cinematic equivalent of scabies – raw, skeevy, and more than a tad unclean – and I mean that as a compliment. The Daughter of Dario’s semi-autobiographical directorial debut wantonly wallows in the decadent filth of drugs, sex and stardom, following an up-and-coming starlet named Anna Battista (Asia) –…
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Great? Evil? Or Just Mediocre?
Some of my colleagues at Slant think it’s the worst movie of the year, if not of all time. NY Press’ Matt Zoller Seitz and LA Weekly’s Scott Foundas (among others) more or less agree. Meanwhile, Roger Ebert and Oprah – to name just two high-profile figures – think it’s phenomenal, brilliant, and the best…
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Fata Morgana (1971): B+
A near-silent documentary journey through (and over) the Sahara scored to Leonard Cohen songs and narrated by both director Werner Herzog and German film historian Lotte Eisner (reading from the Mayan “Popul Voh” creation myth), Fata Morgana is one of Herzog’s earliest – and most evocative – cinematic essays on the uneasy relationships between man…
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Brief Hiatus
I’ll be MIA for the next week or so (taking a trip with the Missus and Little H), but I wouldn’t think of leaving without first supplying a new batch of reviews. Thus, here are my thoughts on this weekend’s dogs-in-peril Disney adventure Eight Below, as well as four upcoming films: Dave Chappelle’s music-and-comedy concert…
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When Titles Go Wrong
Really bad movies may be a dime a dozen, but really bad movie titles are surprisingly rare. Nonetheless, two upcoming films – one that’s definitely happening, and one that seems to be little more than a rumor – have the potential to make bad movie title history. How studios decided to finance projects with such…
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Lessons of Darkness (1992): A-
An unearthly companion piece to Fata Morgana, Werner Herzog’s Lessons of Darkness presents a haunting, hellish vision of post-Gulf War Iraq in which burning oilfields, technological rubble, and lakes of black gold litter the vast desert. Via soaring, surreal aerial photography and a symphonic score of Schubert, Verdi and Wagner, Herzog’s poignant anti-war documentary approaches…
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Black Christmas (1974): B
Pioneering many now-familiar slasher film tropes a good five years before John Carpenter’s seminal Halloween (with which it shares an opening POV shot from a murderer’s perspective), Black Christmas corrodes jolly yuletide cheer with some cruel prank calls, sexual tension and sorority girl slayings. Director Bob Clark works through his grisly premise – part When…
