The Stop Button

Stallone is Kit Latura, disgraced EMS chief (he cared too much). Besides the name, Stallone’s just the disaster movie lead and not even any interesting one (besides the caring too much). There aren’t even any Stallone grunts in the movie and he plays it straight and as well as anyone can play the terrible script. […]

I’m pretty sure I saw the Blood Simple director’s cut twice in the theater. Seems like I did. The second time I helped a couple underage Coen fans get in, and I already knew the recut was a disappointment. I got the original cut from the UK, where it used to be available and might […]

A Civil Action is somewhere in between a modestly budgeted Hollywood drama (you know, the kind they don’t make anymore unless it’s for Oscar season) and a wildly passionate–well, not art film, but it’s certainly something else. Steven Zaillian casts the film with a knowing grown-up indie eye (William H. Macy, Dan Hedaya playing a […]

Joss Whedon has never met a cheap, cheesy one liner he didn’t like. He also feels the need to revise future technology based on modern developments (androids with wireless modems, which they would have had in the first Alien movies… except the lack of that technological possibility when said films were made). The first problem […]

I think I figured out what makes Bruce Surtees’s 1980s photography so particular–he’s accounting for grain in film stock where there’s no significant grain (as opposed to, say, his films of the 1970s). Tightrobe has a muted cleanliness to it, which really doesn’t fit the story–cop who frequents prostitutes versus serial killer of same prostitutes. […]

Andrew Fleming’s Dick has an irresistible premise (slow-witted teenage girls take down Nixon, not Woodward and Bernstein), but it turns out not to be enough for a movie. Not even a ninety-four minute movie. Besides inspired casting of Watergate figures (Dave Foley as Haldeman is probably my favorite, but Saul Rubinek’s Kissinger is the best–and […]