Est. 1998
Movie Infos Title: South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut Year: 1999 Director: Trey Parker Writer: Matt Stone, Pam Brady, Trey Parker In a perfect world, there wouldn’t be a need for South Park. But in our society fueled by hypocrisy, greed and intolerance a film like this is essential to remind us what freedom of speech is all about. It seems that only cartoons are…
Semi-Pro is a Will Ferrell-lead comedy set in the ‘70’s and milking the decade for all of its fashion mishaps and funky hairstyles. Although very similar to most of Ferrell’s movies, this one is based on historical facts and feels more like an homage to basketball than anything else. Edging between being a slapstick comedy, a coming-of-age story and a cheer-for-the-underdog sports film,…
You probably never even heard of this wonderful little film. I didn’t either until I watched Siskel & Ebert’s Best of 97 show, in which Roger Ebert called “Eve’s Bayou” the best film of the year. I didn’t like it nearly as much, but I can understand why Ebert connected with it. As his Siskel said, Ebert and him picked movies that deeply reflect a…
So I got played one more time, like every time they market a movie around the sexiness of its actresses. You’d think I’d learned by now that “hot babes flicks” always turn out disappointing but no, I still thought “Blue Crush” might be great fun. It isn’t, dear God it isn’t! Sure, the surfer girls are pleasant to look at, but the characters they play…
Movie Infos Title: Easy Rider Rating: Year: 1969 Director: Dennis Hopper If one movie can evoke a whole era, this is it. It looks, feels and smells like the 60s inside out. What makes it even more striking is that it’s not an afterthought made by filmmakers decades later: you can sense that these guys were putting on film what they were experiencing at the…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I love the movies of Happy Madison, Sandler’s production company. It’s pretty much always the same deal: Sandler’s a quirky (slacker/golf player/waterboy/ aquarium veterinarian) who sometimes yells a lot and gets aggressive (beating up a giant penguin/ beating up Bob Barker/beating up football players/slapping his androgynous assistant with a fish), but for the most part he’s…
Movie Infos Title: Intacto Year: 2003 Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo They say Samuel (Max von Sydow) is a “god of chance”. He survived the concentration camps as a child while millions of his fellow Jews died, and since his luck hasn’t run out. You gather that he’s such a foolproof gambler that he now owns the casino! Apparently that isn’t enough and he feels the…
In Scott Frank’s surprisingly great “The Lookout”, we’re told at some point that accident victims who suffer frontal-lobe trauma sometimes lose their inhibitions. Far be it from me to suggest that Quentin Tarantino got clunked something fierce during the “Death Proof” shoot, but I’ve rarely seen a filmmaker, in current Hollywood at least, expose his sexual and sadistic kinks on screen with such shameless…
Some people can’t stand arrogant boldness and confidence. One of the best ways for a filmmaker to attract surefire criticism is to start blabbering about how great he is. How many can’t stand Quentin Tarantino or M. Night Shyamalan, not because of their movies but because of their loud-mouthed bravado? Personally, I have no problem with that, in part because to get your vision on…
There’s something about violence that I’ve always instinctively understood but that the world at large, evidently, fails to grasp: violence only leads to more violence. If you have a quarrel with somebody and you go kick his ass, chances are he’ll try to get back at you, then you’ll hit him again, and so on. It never stops. I guess the thinking is that if…