The Stop Button

I try not to spoil things here on the Stop Button, but I’m going to make an exception for this film. It’s a fine example of what not to do….
Mayama is a psychology professor at a college. He is socially inept (the closest comparison is Montgomery Clift in Wild River, only more). He does not […]

I could have gone forever without knowing the Archers (Pressburger wrote the film under a pseudonym) were capable of such a piece of shit. They’re a Weird Mob is not about gangsters–specifically small time gangsters, which is what I thought–it’s about Australians, as seen by a recent Italian immigrant.
It’s really, really bad.
Oddly, the acting is […]

Altman never does a film half-assed. Either it’s great or it’s shit. How one of his films can be shit is varied, but the shitty ones are always just plain… shitty. There’s no formula to figuring out how an Altman film is going to be–usually, if Altman thinks it’s shit, it’s good (M*A*S*H, The Player). […]

I’m trying to remember why I queued Volcano. I’ve recently been on a “rediscovering the mid-to-late 1990s” kick, so that reason is possible, but I’m pretty sure it was because Anne Heche was in it and I wanted to go back to when she was going to have a great career. Heche is incredibly good […]

Looking up Triple Cross on IMDb (I look up everything on IMDb to fill out my little film-viewing record), I noticed the user comment. IMDb user comment’s are almost always terrible and, since I usually check a record after watching a film, amusing. This comment read, “Plummer’s no Connery.”
Well, obviously not. Christopher Plummer can act.
There […]

I am so glad I didn’t see this film in the theater. From what I can tell, it was well reviewed, and I imagine my uncontrollable laughter at the end would have offended a few folks. Japón is long. It’s only 132 minutes, but you feel every one of them.
It was shot 16mm and blown-up […]

What was that? Did anyone else see that? (Probably not, I’m watching the Canadian widescreen DVD).
Sayles actually ripped off the looking at the camera bit from The 400 Blows. He actually did it–while having the characters future self narrate the epilogue. I’ve been dreading watching Matewan for over a year, since April 2004 in fact. […]