According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, twenty-two veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars commit suicide every day, more than die in combat itself. Many more suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and are compelled to take prescription drugs simply to be able to function. Professor Richard Davidson at The Center for Investigating Healthy…
The battle for man’s mind, body and soul has waged since the Garden of Eden and nearly as long on film. It’s not necessarily the easiest theme to convey properly but one infinitely easier to do well using martial arts as the catalyst. I’d gather this is one of the driving reasons Keanu Reeves, a…
There is a sketch in the comedy InAPPropriate Comedy which features a racist guy hawking free boat rides to Africa to black passerbys. Unexpectedly — or at least I hope it wasn’t planned — one guy takes offense (and rightfully so) and proceeds to beat the living crap out of said white supremacist, continuing even…
Jayne Mansfield’s Car is a tedious, depressing dysfunctional film about a tedious, depressing, dysfunctional pair of families, headed by patriarchs Robert Duvall and John Hurt, respectively. It seems that 30 years before, Kingsley Bedford (Hurt) stole Jim Caldwell’s (Duvall) wife, Naomi (Tippi Hedren, whose most famous role was in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds“) and took…
Most famous and renowned for his passionate tales of romance, Kar Wai Wong still seems like an inspired fit for Chinese martial arts moviemaking. The beloved director has a lyrical control of tone and atmosphere, can precisely pace a picture, and has exhibited careful control of the camera. The challenge of melding artful storytelling with…
In the third installment of this franchise, Vin Diesel proves once again that he cannot act his way off of a hostile planet and that his career peaked in “Saving Private Ryan.” Still, as far as dangerous worlds to inhabit, at least this one in Riddick is better than the one in “After Earth.” In…
Formula 1 isn’t often considered movie material for two main reasons: Firstly, recreating such high-speed action in a way that’s even close to reality is incredibly difficult, and secondly, these races last somewhere around 60 laps, and mainstream audiences aren’t going to pay just to see fake cars zoom around fake laps when they could…
