The term “The Ides of March” refers, in modern parlance, to an impending doom. It’s most common use is in the William Shakespeare play Julius Caesar who recounts a seer warning Caesar in advance of his assassination to “beware the Ides of March.” In that case it was simply a reference to the middle of […]
I don’t know anyone that wouldn’t pause for a moment to ask, “Do I really want to see a movie that’s supposed to be a comedy about cancer?” It’s just something that—like bacon and ice cream—shouldn’t be mixed—or so one might think. 50/50 is a film written by Will Reiser, a young comedy writer who […]
Back in 1985, long before fantasy baseball had become popular, I got involved in one of its ancestral forms and that experience exposed me to the importance of seeing baseball as a statistical entity requiring a different type of analysis. It also exposed me to the wonders of Bill James and his approach called Sabermetrics. […]
Way back in China’s history judges were the investigators of the day and during the Tang Dynasty there lived a noteworthy magistrate by the name of Di Renji. In the 1940’s an international author wrote a series of mystery novels loosely based on the judge now re-christened Judge Dee. Today we have a new film based on […]
A lost killer whale adopts a local Vancouver community as its home challenging everything we’ve ever thought about both them and us in The Whale. A two-year-old killer whale swam into Nootka Sound on the western coast of Vancouver Island and emerged alone, far from any other killer whale. This was no typical animal. Luna, as the […]
This weekend I caught a foreign film called Circumstance. It’s the story of two Iranian teenagers who find themselves completely devoted to each other in a country that not only looks down upon lesbian lifestyles but women in general. As you can imagine their path to happiness is beyond rocky. The previews for this film […]
Another weekend seeing two films. This one was the Paul Rudd vehicle Our Idiot Brother. The definition of “comedy” is recorded as: “Professional entertainment consisting of jokes and satirical sketches, intended to make an audience laugh.” Using that as a basis for this movie I’d have to say its got major issues. Here we get Rudd as the […]
In what seems to amount to a rare situation this year I managed to catch two films this holiday weekend. I’ve had countless barriers this year to catching more films but the most striking one has been that I just haven’t felt very interested in much of what’s been put forth so far and with […]
An opportunistic Irish cop teams up with a by-the-book FBI agent to go after a local group of drug smugglers in The Guard. This movie, starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle, introduces us to Sgt. Gerry Boyle (Gleeson), who just happens to be a cop from Ireland. In fact, this is the first oddity of […]
A pure sense of hope against a world filled with callous motivations.
The previews for Super 8 make it crystal clear that Steven Spielberg was involved with the film and suggest he played a pretty big role in every part of its development. The end product, quite heavily, feels as if director J.J. Abrams set out to create an homage to Spielberg with this major release. Many films […]
Woody Allen movies are generally a hit-or-miss affair to the extreme. When they hit they really resonate and create wonderful lasting memories that can be shared with new viewers time and again or even with a bunch who’ve already seen the film a dozen times. When they miss they miss so completely that you wonder […]