I've long been a big fan of Angela Carter's work, both fiction and nonfiction. In the latter category, I loved her book The Sadean Woman, feminist criticism of de Sade that points out problems in his work without turning into knee-jerk puritanism ( Read more... )

This is less of a review than a brief analysis of the movie's "moral" (stop reading now if you don't want spoilers!) Upon re-watching this old favorite of mine, I was struck by the detail put into scenes about prospecting, particularly one that shows the details of panning for gold. Such details contribute nothing to the plot but are still a nice ( Read more... )

I find it interesting that so many movies feel the need to ‘respond’ to High Noon. Well, maybe interesting is the wrong word- more like baffling. I read about the attacks when it came out, calling the hero unmanly for showing fear and appearing to almost cry, and my reaction is a stunned cry of "But it’s High Noon! How can anyone hate High Noon ( Read more... )

 It's not that it's a movie about robots from space- I like robots, and I don't mind if they're from space.  It's not that it's a dumb action movie, because I've enjoyed plenty of those.  If someone asked me what I wanted to watch, a dumb action movie about robots from space might not be my first choice, but I wouldn't be morally opposed to it.

But ( Read more... )

            And, you realize, the makers of such special features aren’t being sexist or exclusive in having only male speakers, you’re just not the target audience and never have been.  Sure, it’s great that you loved their movie, but you’re not really expected to- and if you do, there’s still a suspicion that you’re not fully getting it.  It can ( Read more... )

I'm not sure I really need to write a full review of this, but a few point about the movie are worth noting:

1. It's not a masterpiece, but if you like seeing pretty guys in pinstripes shooting tommy guns and driving thirties cars- as I do- you could do a lot worse.

2.  Dillinger did not kill people, for fuck's sake!  He prided himself on it!

3. The ( Read more... )

Yes, it's bad.  But you already knew that.

I'm not really here to review Batman and Robin, since it's pretty much universally agreed to be the worst superhero movie ever made, and I didn't see anything that would make me disagree.  I wouldn't have even seen it if not for the Rifftrax.  I'm also not going to talk about the homoeroticism, which would ( Read more... )

1. I don't know which I want more- to marry Humphrey Bogart or to be Humphrey Bogart.
( Read more... )

Exploitative.  Progressive.  A classic.  A hack job.  It's not often that you can agree with both sides of a controversy regarding a movie.

Its name is Freaks, and this oft-banned tale of revenge by deformed sideshow performers was director Tod Browning's follow-up to his earlier film, Dracula.  As a former circus man himself, he decided he would ( Read more... )

It's all there in the title.  I could tell you it's a horror comedy musical that looks like Blade Runner, sounds like a punk Rocky Horror and features performances from people you can hardly imagine occupying the same universes as each other, but would it really matter?  Either you'll want to see a movie called Repo: The Genetic Opera or you won't.

( Read more... )