Crime Films
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John Wick: A Lot Of The Old Ultraviolence (R)
My qualms began with the poster. The show hadn’t even started. The film is called John Wick and the tagline is, “Don’t set him off.” The latest Keanu picture sits at the end of a long line of pun-titled actions films, like Max Payne or The Dark Knight. The title brings together the identity of […]
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The Judge (R)
Light is a universal symbol of truth. Though we associate it with warmth and openness, light carries a burden of pain as well. Stare into a floodlight and your eyes will water. Lasers—concentrated beams of light—can burn and cut as well as repair. Sometimes a light is so blinding that it obscures all but itself. […]
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Gone Girl (R)
For a film which depicts one of the more grotesque murders in recent cinematic memory, the most terrifying moment in Gone Girl is nothing more than the film’s hero being asked a few seemingly mundane questions about his missing wife by a pair of bored cops. Shortly before noon, on his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick […]
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Pulp Fiction (R)
Nobody ever goes to the bathroom in movies. As strange as amateur comedians seem to find this, it’s entirely reasonable from a storytelling perspective. It may not be completely realistic, but good stories seldom are. Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction is probably the most famous exception to cinematic convention on toilet usage, with no fewer than […]
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Joe (R)
Joe Bageant tried to summarize rural Southern life with his book title, Deer Hunting with Jesus. With his new movie Joe, David Gordon Green presents the South’s Goth image, one that might be described with a title such as Deer Hunting, but Jesus Couldn’t Make It This Weekend. All of the classical tropes of a […]
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Inception (PG-13)
In the same way genealogies provide foundation for expounding upon and explaining the personhood and character of real human beings, so any good author deserves to have any individual work placed into the context and trajectory of their oeuvre. Whether or not Christopher Nolan is a good man, I cannot say, although by this point […]
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The Bling Ring (PG-13)
The Bling Ring is not an ambitious movie. The show might be aptly criticized for not being ambitious enough, but then I think moviemaking as a whole might collapse under the weight of such a demand. In truth, there are less than a dozen ambitious filmmakers alive. You say there are more. I say there […]
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Trance (R)
Trance is a labyrinth without a string leading out. While anyone sitting down to watch might expect a director of Danny Boyle’s caliber (Sunshine, 28 Days Later) to provide that string, the third act of this film was well underway before I realized there could be no satisfying escape. Somewhere in his house, I imagine, […]
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The Counselor (R)
Ridley Scott doesn’t do feel-good movies. Ridley Scott does movies scored with the sounds of desperate women warbling in Middle Eastern tones. Even when Ridley Scott decides to make a feel-good movie, he still uses Russell Crowe, as if to say, “Not so fast.” Early on in his career, Scott tapped into something profoundly mythic […]