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When filmmakers fall asleep and flunk high school American History, America: The Motion Picture is what’s created years later- an animated, anarchic, free association lunacy that mixes up the American Revolution with the Civil War and shows that it respects America by disregarding its truth and hyping its memes. In this alternate America, George-Bon Jovi-Washington…
Every cut is a bleeding thorn, every breath is a spread of fingers. The ear records all its silences. - Lose a hand and it goes to the trash heap, lose an ear and everyone will think of Van Gogh. - In the landfill the hand discovers fire, it discovers how to conquer the rats,…
Comedies usually begin with a funeral and end with a wedding. Tragedies begin with weddings and end with death. Paddleton (on Netflix) starts with bosom buddies bonding and ends with bereavement. The film never hides what it is, a gentle comedy stuck in the twilight moments between light and dark, life and death, love and…
Read More "“Paddleton”: Settling into the Gentle Comedy That Is Friendship and Death."
Art has the potential to be great but most of it is mediocre. That is why there are no great film satires about art— the unrelenting tedium of seeing cliches and recycled themes is just a bore. It is like watching an endless strip of recycled black and white frames with one color one, a…
Read More "“Velvet Buzzsaw”: An Average Painting in an Average Movie Does Not Equal Greatness"
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, Netflix's interactive full length Black Mirror episode prides itself on its game-ability and meta-ness that stays steps ahead of the average viewer. Binary on screen choices can lead to different outcomes in this sci-fi cautionary tale of a game programmer caught up in both deadlines and fate that is in the hands…
Read More "“Black Mirror: Bandersnatch”: Where You Decide If Netflix Is the Villain or Not?"
For those expecting Outlaw King (on Netflix) to be a sequel to Braveheart will be sorely disappointed. The only appearance of William Wallace in David Mackenzie’s telling of Robert the Bruce (Chris Pine), is his quartered (judging by the outward curve) left hand nailed to a Scottish cross in a public square- and that is…
Read More "“Outlaw King” Mucks Its Way Thru Scottish History"
Kurt Russell can make you believe he is Santa Claus, although be it one that doesn’t ho-ho-ho, who is not happy with the fatter oft advertised fatter version, and can belt out an Elvis style rendition of any holiday song. Russell’s Santa in The Christmas Chronicles (a Netflix movie) exists between Billy Bob Thornton bad…
Orson Welles last film The Other Side of the Wind (on Netflix) reconstituted from footage and assembled by a master team of film editors, directors and Welles scholars, establishes some lofty goals, mainly how to have both a serious film enshrouded in the shell of an intentionally bad one. Wind uses different film styles (black…
Read More "“The Other Side of the Wind”: Orson Welles Own Serious Parody of Himself and Cinema"
Apostle makes you accept or reject its essential contradictions. Accepting it will lead one to discovering one of the better horror films of the year, while rejecting it will make one think it is a mess.
Read More "“Apostle”: Getting to the Gore Via Perverted Paradise"
