curated cinema: a quarter of a century later, a movie that we can now see as a drama about climate-change
2000’s The Perfect Storm is on Paramount+ in the US, Prime in the UK (and other services, too).
William Fichtner
12 Strong movie review: America enters the “graveyard of empires”
Tense but never sensationalized action adventure about the first post–9/11 US foray into Afghanistan, an extraordinary culture clash and mashup of medieval and modern technologies.
The Lone Ranger review: weak whiskey
Limp and lifeless, this overlong and undercooked would-be blockbuster cannot focus on either the hard-edged realities or the magical mysteries it toys with.
watch it: “Armadyne: Taking Mankind Into The Future” (viral for Neill Blomkamp’s ‘Elysium’)
After District 9, I will follow Neill Blomkamp anywhere…
Drive Angry 3D (review)
I’d like to call Drive Angry Ghost Rider 2: Ghost Driver, except that a sequel to Cage’s previous awful example of cinematic demonic road rage is, in fact, already in production, for our sins. I might better call it Con Air Goes to Hell, because of the beautiful — and by beautiful, I mean, of course, vile and reprehensible — way it picks up the gauntlet thrown down by that violently misogynist film and slaps that gauntlet right at the viewer. In 3D!
The Perfect Storm review: following bliss
An intense and terrifying man-against-nature action movie, and also an unsentimental and unclichéd drama about following your bliss: doing what you’re made to do even to the point of risking your life.
Go (review)
So, Go’s three interconnected tales follow a diverse group of Los Angeles twentysomethings as their lives bang up against one another in a scenario that’s the 90s in a nutshell, from the Xer point of view: sex and danger that’s both exciting and terrifying (the clever script uses the word ‘go’ both in the imperative, let’s-get-out-of-here sense and also in the imperative, orgasmic sense, as a synonym for ‘come’). And is if to demonstrate typical Xer cynicism, it all happens while holly jolly Christmas passes by practically unnoticed in the background.
