I like movies and they like me right back. You can find out how much by visiting my personal site Citizen Charlie.
Intelligence professionals are understandably media shy. Israel’s Shin Bet stays out of the spotlight more than most. Other than the organization’s man in charge, all other senior leaders are unknown to the public. Furthermore, they do not give interviews. That was until filmmaker, Dror Moreh, pulled off a journalistic coup with The Gatekeepers, a documentary…
If the “Twilight” series had dialogue as witty and snappy as Beautiful Creatures, it would not be the target of so many jokes and eye rolls. Here we have another film with supernatural beings, but this time, we get witches and warlocks instead of vampires or zombies. There are teenagers involved; therefore, stay tuned for…
Zombie movies are always shot from the point of view of the last few and scared survivors. They are outnumbered, running out of ammo, their friends are bitten one by one, and the zombies just keep on coming after their brains. What about a zombie story from the zombie’s point of view? They experience the…
Parker is the laziest movie to come down the line in a long time. It is a remake of a remake. Among other films, the director, Taylor Hackford, made “Ray,” “The Devil’s Advocate,” and “An Officer and a Gentleman.” The writer, John J. McLaughlin, wrote “Hitchcock” and “Black Swan.” Did they just want to make…
If a horror film’s story is strong enough, then there is no need for it to resort to “cheap scream” techniques to manipulate the audience. A loud, closing door during a quiet period will elicit the same scream as will a figure walking by a window with a sudden, shrieking violin. There is no earthly…
The on-going feud between Israelis and Palestinians over land in the West Bank is extremely politicized. Most days, only harsh words fired back and forth between Palestinian villages and Israeli settlements and some days rock projectiles and even bullets escalate the situation to tragedy. What Emad Burnat’s camera does is watch the back-and-forth chest pounding….
Some years ago I learned 1930s and ’40s era gangsters learned to talk “gangster” from the motion pictures. James Cagney probably had more to do with coining gangster lingo and slang than John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, and Al Capone combined. Gangster Squad gets the clothes right, does a decent job with 1949 era Los…
