Real-life movie moment

The movie: “Mystery Men” (1999); dir. by Kinka Usher; starring Ben Stiller, William H. Macy, Janeane Garofalo, Hank Azaria, Paul Reubens, Geoffrey Rush, Greg Kinnear. The moment: While shoveling piles of snow out of the driveway, I unearthed the frozen-solid corpse of a baby mouse. As I flung it off the shovel, it fell a [...]

No. 23: “Reservoir Dogs” (1992)

“Somebody’s shoved a red-hot poker up our ass, and I want to know whose name is on the handle!” ~~Mr. Pink Conversation seems like the antithesis of senseless violence; talking is what reasonable, sound-minded adults do. Quentin Tarantino’s world doesn’t work that way. Think back to 1994′s “Pulp Fiction,” where Pumpkin and Honey Bunny share a congenial pre-robbery [...]

Review: “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951)

Banish all thoughts of the regrettable ”Island of Dr. Moreau,” “Don Juan Demarco” or even Col. Walter E. Kurtz; this is how Marlon Brando deserves to be remembered. Elia Kazan’s “A Streetcar Named Desire,” trimmed down and censored from Tennesse Williams’ play, is a snapshot of Brando when he was bursting with rakish charm and talent. As the volatile Stanley Kowalski, [...]

No. 22: “The Lives of Others” (2006)

Germany’s “Das Leben der Anderen,” Oscars’ 2006 pick for Best Foreign Language Film, is that rare gem: a thriller that engages the emotions instead of bombarding the senses. There are no explosions, no high-speed car chases; no, director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s too smart for that. Instead, he crafts a taut, deliberately paced masterpiece where the dramatic [...]

Review: “Showgirls” (1995)

I don’t know about you, but for me the moment Elizabeth Berkley licked the stripper pole in “Showgirls” was the moment the movie became a contender in the Worst Movie Ever Made race. And that’s just what the first act had to offer. Thus, it seems entirely appropriate that, when speaking of the movie that Roger [...]

“Avatar”: post-review musings

Given that “Avatar” topped nearly every critic’s Best of 2009 list or got some kind of honorary mention, I wondered post-viewing why it didn’t make mine. The first answer is the obvious one: I didn’t see the film before I made the list. M. Carter @ the Movies just had to — just had to [...]

Cameron blazes dramatic new trail in “Avatar”

Horatio: “O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!” Hamlet: “And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” ~~”Hamlet” (Act 1, Scene 5) Before James Cameron’s gorgeous, vividly imagined ”Avatar” absorbed me into it completely, Horatio and Hamlet’s exchange [...]

No. 21: “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1966)

Nick: “You’ve all gone crazy. Nuts.” Martha: “Relax. Sink into it. You’re no better than anybody else.” George (Richard Burton) likes to paint himself as the put-upon husband, an innocent victim shocked by the viciousness of his marriage. His wife Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) knows better. ”You married me for it,” she hisses at him, and right there she breaks [...]

No. 20: “Requiem for a Dream” (2000)

“Somebody like you can really make things all right for me.” ~~Harry Goldfarb Be forewarned: Darren Aronofsky’s “Requiem for a Dream” is a dismal affair, a punishing bit of filmmaking that stuns the senses with rapid-fire camera work and empties the soul of all possibility. Certainly the “thing without feathers” that poet Emily Dickinson wrote of cannot be found [...]

A quest for crap

Sometimes you get a notion in your head and you let it run you crazy. Such is my situation since last night, when I finished reading David Gilmour’s “The Film Club,” a memoir about three years he spent watching and discussing films with his teen-aged son, Jesse, for the university’s book club. There’s a paragraph of two [...]