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Posts Tagged With ‘ christian bale ’

 

Avian Philosophy

January 29th, 2024

The movie industry is generally an unforgiving one for filmmakers, and it demands that each film made either be profitable or critically acclaimed.* As a result, incompetents, nepotists, and erratic people are usually weeded out sooner or later. The ones left standing decades later are the modern masters of the art form, and it’s important to check out their work. It’s also important to be honest with yourself on how you feel about those modern masters. Maybe Scorsese’s Raging Bull is too brutal for you. Totally cool! Maybe Kubrick leaves you cold. A valid perspective! The way you feel is... Read More

The Big Ka-Boom

July 11th, 2022

One of my favorite ways to while away a few minutes is to read one-star product reviews. But not just for anything, oh, no. The only ones that will do are the classics, the unimpeachable works that virtually everybody adores. I like to find those works, then look up the people that hate them. For the most part, it’s like seeing who’s going for the gold in the Bad Take Olympics. A negative review for Schindler’s List was one of my favorites, which sadly seems to have been removed. The writer acknowledged the importance of memorializing the Holocaust. Their objection, however, was all the... Read More

Go Like Hell

November 24th, 2019

One of the keenest pleasures found in moviegoing is that of competence porn. A great comedy can flood your brain with endorphins, a solid horror movie can unnerve you days after you saw it, and the right drama can restore your faith in the essential decency of humanity. Even the much-maligned superhero genre can, when executed properly, provide viewers with something mythic. That’s all well and good, but I really dig films about smart people doing a particular job with intelligence and competence. Consider Apollo 13, a film I absolutely adore. On the one hand, I understand perhaps 25 percent... Read More

The Angler – Local Movie Reviewer Gives Opinions on Vice

December 30th, 2018

There are a lot of people extremely angry at Adam McKay’s new film Vice. It’s not surprising, considering the film a) is about some of the most well-known people in recent history and b) is political. If you’re reading this, you probably have an opinion about Vice-President Richard Cheney, whether you think he was a tough government operator who did what was necessary, or you think he was a major player in Hell’s demonic hierarchy. The political aspects make things even trickier. We’ve talked before about how at this moment in history, virtually everything is polarized. One of the problems... Read More

Rage Against The Machine

December 27th, 2015

There’s a line in Adam McKay’s new film, The Big Short, that perfectly encapsulates what the film means and how its characters relate to it. “The truth is like poetry. And everyone f**king hates poetry.” When we’re children, we’re taught to share, to be nice, to behave in a fundamentally decent way. Theoretically, anyway. As we get older, and it’s different for everyone, things change. We’re told that success is measured monetarily, that our self-worth is directly proportional to our net worth. We display a lack of empathy that’s staggering,... Read More