No. 41: “Quills” (2000)

“Are your convictions so fragile they cannot stand in opposition to mine? Is your god so flimsy, so weak? For shame.” ~~Marquis de Sade In 1987, a photographer named Andres Serrano dropped a plastic crucifix in a jar of his urine and snapped a photo. The result, ”Piss Christ,” snared accolades and secured grant funding for Serrano. That photo [...]

Oscar snubs its nose at you, Matt Damon (et. al)

Every year begins with the same blasted vow: I won’t wear my heart on my sleeve. I won’t get sucked in. I’ll be strong and aloof. In short, I swear I won’t let myself get emotionally involved in the Oscar race. PFFFFFFT. Go on. Now pull the other one. Yeah, so that never happens. Never [...]

Top 10 actors/actresses of 2009

How many blog comments, I wonder, have inspired whole posts? I don’t have an answer to that question, but the ever-astute Encore Entertainment posed a difficult but interesting question: Who gave the best performances, the ones that would top my list of favorites for the year? Now that’s a thinker … but one that only lasted about six [...]

Review: “Two Lovers” (2009)

Leonard Kraditor (Joaquin Phoenix) is a stumbler. He stumbles into two relationships — with the stunning, troubled Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), a kind-hearted family friend — clumsily and without purpose. He stumbles into jobs, hobbies, social interactions. Things simply seem, in Leonard’s addled mind, to happen to him, never the other way around. This mix of confusion [...]

10 great Joaquin Phoenix roles

Now that the furor over Joaquin Phoenix’s recent attempts to outdo the Unabomber in terms of sheer weirdness and facial hair has subsided, we fans are left with a few nagging questions. Should we have seen this breakdown coming? Were there context clues along the way that we missed? One day, will we look back at [...]

Perfect for every part

In his review of “Burn After Reading,” Roger Ebert remarked that Frances McDormand has a “rare ability to seem correctly cast in every role.” Truer words were never spoken, I’d say, but they made me little mind take a wander and a ponder. (It’s dangerous to do both at once, but my mind sort of [...]

Review: “Reservation Road” (2007)

By all rights, Terry George’s “Reservation Road” should be a 2 a.m. Lifetime Television weeper. All the trappings are there — a freak car accident that turns into an unsolved hit-and-run case; a grieving father who sees closure only in revenge; a driver whose sanity is buckling under the weight of what he’s scrambled to cover up — just [...]

Say it ain’t so, Johnny!

Cry, cry, cry. That’s exactly what this blogger — and, I imagine, legions of like-minded fans — will be doing after “Two Lovers” leaves theaters. Why? Well, it appears that Joaquin Phoenix (one of the best actors in Hollywood, in my opinion) will, in his own words, “quit the business” of acting after the romantic [...]