Double Reading

Southland Tales is one of those movies that I don’t even know where to start “reviewing.” So I’m not going to even try. I’ll just say this: The movie was awesome and quite possibly made just for me.
Other details worth noting in case you are curious about the movie:

It stars “The Rock,” “Buffy,” and JT.
Not [...]

The film Across the Universe accomplished something that I’ve been playing around with in my head for a long time: Create dialogue that constantly references pop music lyrics. While Across the Universe took the idea a step further and turned that dialogue into a musical format, I still love the idea and was impressed with [...]

I’m sad to report that I was pretty disappointed with Brian de Palma’s The Black Dahlia. He’s one of my favorite directors (Femme Fatale is one of my all-time favorite movies and I also love Snake Eyes, Body Double [though I'm not sure it warrants a special edition], Scarface [which has an awesome special edition], [...]

I just finished watching Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm and it reminded me of a lot of other family-oriented dramas — and it especially reminded me of plays from the 1950s.
I know it’s hardly profound, but I really like it in movies/plays/etc. traverse into the negative zone (as the movie calls it, borrowing from The [...]

I remember when The Dandy Warhols‘ song “Not If You Were the Last Junkie On Earth” came out. I was in high school. I remember thinking, “Wow, this is a good song.” But then I saw the video and the song became (relatively) big and I basically wrote-off the band as sell-outs and copycats and [...]

I won’t say much about Ocean’s 12, mostly because there isn’t much to say. The film is fun and has a bunch of twists at the end that make you go, “Oooohhh,” but for the most part the film is just a basic action/suspense movie. (Though, to be fair, Steven Soderbergh is a genius filmmaker [...]

(I had started writing this post literally months ago but sorta gave up so this is a super simplified version…)
Ever since taking a “Gothic American Literature” course in college, the idea of the uncanny has been one of my favorite literary themes. The idea comes from Sigmund Freud’s essay “The Uncanny.” The best way I [...]

… Maybe he’s not so bad as we think? … Maybe he really is a nice guy? … I don’t know. All I know is that I’m feeling very confused right now.
I’m not sure exactly how to put this, but after watching the self-reflexively sympathetic Journeys With George, I have been brainwashed/fooled/deceived/whatever into think that [...]

Now that I’ve seen Ichi the Killer, I can say that it is my favorite Takashi Miike film. Like my other Miike film reviews (Dead or Alive and Izo, I won’t say too much — mostly because there are so many things happening in the movies that it’s hard to keep track.
For the most part, [...]

I’ve been a fan of John Waters ever since my friend Dan sent me a video copy of Desperate Living back when I was in high school. Dan was a huge John Waters fan, and after experiencing the total fucked-up-ness of Desperate Living, I had to see more.
I’m not sure what order I watched things [...]