No. 6: “The Princess Bride” (1987)

“She is alive, or was an hour ago. If she is otherwise when I find her I shall be very put out.” ~~Prince Humperdinck Giants and monsters and evil wayward kings, sword fights, gallant gentlmen on noble steeds, lovely damsels awaiting rescue, perfectly magical kisses and the prospect of love everlasting — it’s enough to put a [...]

Tyler Perry’s “I Can Do Bad” a (surprisingly) good character study

Above all else, Tyler Perry’s poignant “I Can Do Bad All by Myself” is a movie about people who have fallen through what Pastor Brian (Marvin Winans) calls “the crevices of life.” Nobody’s as familiar with this predicament as April Sullivan (Taraji P. Henson), a nightclub singer who pretends she’s perfectly happy sleeping with married sleazeball Randy (Brian J. White) and waking up every morning with a [...]

10 great antiheroes

There’s nothing I love more than a really sneaky, unpredictable, hateful and delightfully ee-viyill* villain. Unless we’re talking about antiheroes. And if we are, well, that’s a horse — or should I say jackass? — of an entirely different color. Few things are more intriguing than characters who do that wavering, drunken dance on the line between [...]

10 dastardly movie villains

I’m a villain girl. Yes, I know the history of cinema is filled with do-gooder types who rob from the rich, give to the poor, cuff up the bad guys and try, in their kind-hearted ways, to rid the world of wrongdoing. I even know that these men and women usually end up celebrating with [...]

Review: “The Graduate” (1967)

Sometimes we choose the films we watch, but the most important ones seem to choose us. And so it was with “The Graduate,” one of those timeless classics I kept meaning to see but never did. This always seemed a grave error in judgment, waiting so long to meet Benjamin Braddock. Then ”The Graduate” finally cycled up from [...]

What’s a little ambiguity among flixsters?

Perhaps unwittingly, I think that Darren, that movie blogger paragon of nerditude and film erudition, has created a brilliant idea for a doctoral thesis with his clever and flawlessly argued post on the ambiguous ending of “The Usual Suspects.” Now that’s a paper — and even a book! — I’d fight off a few patrons at the [...]

No. 5: “Apocalypse Now” (1979)

“I used to think if I died in an evil place then my soul wouldn’t make it to heaven. Well, fuck. I don’t care where it goes as long it ain’t here.” ~~Chef There’s a moment lurking in the soul-deadening “Apocalypse Now,” a moment nearly muted by the hum of machine gun fire, that seems thoroughly unremarkable: In the chaotic trenches outside the [...]

“Jennifer’s Body” a witty, surreal teen comedy

I knew it. I knew it. I knew that if I hoped and prayed and wished and waited a long, long time that the Bizarro Alternate World would take over and the unthinkable would happen. And in “Jennifer’s Body,” the unthinkable has become reality: The brunette’s dicing up male hearts like room-temperature butter, and her mousy blonde friend — [...]

Damon grounds Soderbergh’s gnarly, screwball “The Informant!”

Matt Damon, it would seem, is on a mission to make Trey Parker and Matt Stone chow down on some crow — big, heapin’ pie shells full of it. Since 2004, when “Team America” gave us the Matt Damon puppet, the Oscar winner has headlined two more “Ocean’s” movies, another Bourne thriller and mind-benders like “The Departed” [...]

No. 4: “Harold and Maude” (1971)

“A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They’re just backing away from life.” ~~Maude Chardin Director Hal Ashby announces his intentions for “Harold and Maude” in the opening scene, and those intentions are, shall we say, a bit impish: Rich, purposeless 20-something Harold Chasen (Bud Cort) swings from a noose [...]