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IN
THEATERS
Speed
Racer
“Speed Racer” is a stylish, electrifying,
intense and visually breathtaking catastrophe of a movie,
a picture so filled with wondrous images and astonishing sights
that one is left bewildered by the notion of so much technical
energy being squandered on a narrative so obviously uninterested
in matching it. Or maybe that is basically the whole point.
I dunno. Based off of an old 1960s Japanese animated series–
one which I am unfamiliar with – the filmmakers present
their endeavor with just the kind of flat-footed, shapeless
screenplay you half expect to be derived of the source material.
But what empowers these filmmakers with enough nerve to justify
giving this clueless premise much more enthralling a presentation
than it so clearly deserves?
Posted May 9, 2008 |
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THE
ARCHIVES
The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning 
The blood-soaked horror movie has become a disgusting
and contemptible beast, burdened by notions of macho-sadism
and traces of insanity that suggest their filmmakers are either
overzealous with visuals, completely twisted and warped, or
somewhere in between. They only get away with it because audiences
have embraced it for 30 years. Recall the success of the original
“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” or how audiences
flooded to “Friday the 13th” and its sequels. Moviegoers
seem to be amused by brainless bloodbaths in which idiotic teenagers
are sliced and diced like cuts of meat at a slaughterhouse.
Posted May 9, 2008 |
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The
Best and Worst of 2007
2007,
you might say, was the year of revelations at the cinema,
a year of surprises, startling discoveries and spectacular
achievements. But that is not necessarily a positive prospect,
either. Saturated by ambition and ambivalence, the movies
that occupied theater screens in the 12 months of the calendar
year offered high stylization, great energy and loud explosions,
and payoffs too brief and momentary to make many of them deserving
of that output. The trend was not one limited to the more
prolific of box office competitors, either; like a disease
that transcends culture and social divides, no one, including
the Indies or the art-house flicks, were safe from the mediocrity
that spread through the crops.
Posted March 25, 2008 |
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