Review: “Jindabyne” (2006)

Old Jindabyne, located in New South Wales, Australia, is mostly invisible. Flooded in the 1960s to make Lake Jindabyne, the abandoned town sits quietly under the rippling surface. But on some days, when lake waters drop low enough, parts of Jindabyne come into view — a reminder of sorts that buried things have a tendency not to [...]

“Blind Side” an uncommonly understated human drama

Let’s be plain about “The Blind Side”: Lee Daniels’ “Precious” it ain’t. Save for two damaged protagonists, these films have little in common. In “The Blind Side,” John Lee Hancock dulls the sharp edges of a childhood lived in poverty and neglect; Daniels displays the emotional and physical hurts in full view. Really, it’s the difference between neatly bandaged wounds and open ones.  [...]

I’m here! I’m alive!

Please come over! I have a refrigerator full of turkey and stuffing that’s starting to petrify. News of my death, to quoth that late great philosophizer Mark Twain, has been exaggerated. I’ve been out and about enjoying this Turkey Day holiday — hope you, dear readers, have done the same. Come Monday, though? It’s back [...]

Review: “Pulp Fiction” (1994)

Quentin Tarantino may be many things — perverted, profane, whipsmart, cocky, a little too enamored with his own cleverness — but subtle he is not. He’s not even in the ballpark. Matter of fact, if that ballpark blew up, he wouldn’t hear the sound for another three days. Nah, Tarantino’s a guts-glory-chicks-and-explosions kind of director, and that imagination [...]

Gritty “Precious” offers uplift without melodrama

Along the way, some well-meaning but patronizing soul probably told Precious Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) that every day is a gift from God, but she has no reason to believe it. Raped by her father and abused and insulted by her vicious mother (Mo’Nique), the stoic Precious leads a life marked by unimaginable daily horrors. She has, at 16, learned to retreat far [...]

No. 15: “Dead Man Walking” (1995)

“It’s not faith, it’s work.” ~~Sister Helen Prejean Humanity exists in everyone. Men are not worse than their worst deeds. Talk about ideas that are easy to preach but hard to practice, particularly on death row. The miracle of Tim Robbins’ immensely powerful ”Dead Man Walking” is that every character struggles with these concepts, and many [...]

No. 14: “12 Angry Men” (1957)

“It’s always difficult to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And wherever you run into it, prejudice always obscures the truth. I don’t really know what the truth is. I don’t suppose anybody will ever really know.” ~~Juror #8 For some men, it’s disturbingly simple to dismiss the full, oppressive weight a possibly innocent/possibly guilty defendant’s [...]

10 best Disney movie villains

It took me about 20 years, but I finally figured out where my strange cinematic attraction to the lyin’, cheatin’, stealin’, no-good, lowdown tricksters, sheisters and baddies comes from. Walt Disney, if you’re eavesdropping from the Great Disney Vault in the Sky, I blame you for this. Disney, you see, got me hooked on villains at an [...]

“Twilight”: Redux

By now, I like to think I’ve made my feelings about “Twilight” — the series in general and the WHYGODWHYDIDTHEYMAKEIT? movie in particular — pretty obvious. I am not only a member of the Society of Twilight Haters, I am the founder of the South Carolina chapter. And based on post comments from yesterday’s review [...]

Real-life movie moment

The movie: “Unforgiven” (1992); dir. by Clint Eastwood; starring Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Frances Fisher. The moment: Early morning (3:13 a.m.), my bathroom floor. A showdown between M. Carter @ the Movies and a spider with eyes big enough to reflect the flashlight beam. The correlation: Evil Glinty-Eyed spider: “I don’t deserve to [...]