Two things I never tire of: Punk rock music and being a father. Therefore, The Other F Word, which combines the two, is the perfect documentary for me. Basically, a bunch of old-timey West Coast punks (Rancid, Blink 182, US Bombs, NOFX, The Vandals and Pennywise, amongst others) talk about what it’s like balancing their…
Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson) is uncharitable, misogynistic, nihilistic, a racist, a chain-smoker, a raging alcoholic, and a bad father, but Rampart, the movie he’s thrust into, is astonishingly dull. Helmed by Oren Moverman, it explores the state of the LAPD circa the late ’90s but, despite what its title suggests, the film isn’t about the…
Daniel Espinosa’s Safe House is a lesson in “Filmmaking with Parkinson’s.” The choppily edited actions sequences — onslaughts of bright colors and enough “shaky-camera” to make Jason Bourne nauseous — are hard to endure. Moreover, they’re built on clichés: Coincidental protests (allowing the protagonists some cover), accidental assassinations, and a handful of close calls. Because…
Alice is an unflattering name for a woman. It’s not, however, nearly as bad as Claire is. For me, Claire conjures up an image of a sad, homely girl whiling away the hours, in a rocker, crocheting a sweater. It is, therefore, a fitting name then for the boy-haircut having, wearing the same dull clothes…
“Dance the winds will touch your feet, just dance and dance feel the beat, dance the last atom cutting a knot, just dance and dance until you cannot” — Miroslava Odalovic I sometimes have dreams about being in a place with gorgeous colors and heightened emotions and a feeling of weightlessness. I was thinking about…
In Chronicle, Josh Trank’s (who’s previously worked on TV’s “The Kill Point”) theatrical debut, we learn that, much like how it is with young love, when high school students are confronted with superpowers, things can quickly escalate from skipping stones and playing aeronautical football to committing crimes of passion and bouts of melodrama. Yet, despite…
Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is a follow on to the 2008 worldwide hit “Journey to the Center of the Earth” which starred Brendan Fraser. In this one, Fraser has been unceremoniously replaced by former WWE star Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson who plays shunned step-dad Hank Parsons to spoiled Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson). As Hank…
