WATCH THIS!

I can remember a time when I was about 16 that I was at a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. We were standing around after the game, trying to get autographs from players as they left the parking lot across the street from the firehouse on Waveland Avenue. I don’t remember much about the game; I don’t remember who the Cubs were playing, or what the score was, or who won (though, let’s be honest, it probably wasn’t the Cubs). What I do remember, though, was Mark Grace walking to his car. He was dressed in a pastel silk suit that Tony Montana would consider over the top, and had two women with him that looked like they had sprung fully-formed from the mind of someone with a dirtier imagination than an ancient Greek god’s. He got into a Porsche with the girls, and left without signing any autographs.

I knew at that moment that I’d never be Mark Grace. (more…)

The near-universal adoration of Quentin Tarantino has always somewhat perplexed me. While I still consider Pulp Fiction one of the 4 or 5 best movies of the 1990s, it’s the only one of his, either as director or writer, that I have any real love for. True, at times the dialog in Reservoir Dogs allows it to escape the monotonous and grueling death march of its overworked and underdone plot. And while I do have an abiding and inflexible love for True Romance, it’s almost entirely because of my near-obsession with The Brothers Scott and their bodies of work. The remainder of his oeuvre (that I’ve seen) is rife with sloppy, flabby messes, each bearing the overlong, under-edited mark of someone who was lauded as a genius too soon, and believed it. His current offering, Inglourious Basterds, proves that, while it’s too much to expect an old dog to learn new tricks, the older the dog, the more satisfied you are when they only urinate on the linoleum. (more…)

This is not a good movie. It is artless, it is crass, it is vaguely racist, and it sets back international relations 50 years or more.

But God help me. I loved it. (more…)

If there’s one thing that Ridley Scott is able to do, it’s make a movie that looks really, really good. Body of Lies is a well-paced, well-acted spooks-and-spies thriller, but without the whole Ridley look it would just be Syriana-lite. (more…)