moviereview

“Well, here we are on the road.”“Yup, that’s where we are, all right.” A big part of my cinephilia is the search for the new and unexpected. I’ll take the bold and original over the well-crafted but trite any day. I actually watched Two-Lane Blacktop for the second time last weekend with my brother and…

You know, there was a time, in the late nineties and early aughts when it just honestly looked to me like there was nothing really new and original in quote-unquote “mainstream” movies. Not that everything was universally bad, it was just universally been-there-done-that. Even comedies. Especially comedies. But the best of the recent Judd Apatow-produced…

There is something so maddening about Gus Van Sant. He keeps brushing up against greatness, making you think that he’ll finally break through and make a movie that is satisfying both as art and entertainment, but inevitably, he pulls back from fully committing to either. Paranoid Park is his latest effort, and the first of…

HOLLYWOOD MOVIE EXECUTIVE ONE Check it out, we have a script by hot up-and-comer Christopher Columbus, about adorable little critters who turn into monsters! And it’s loaded with small-town schmaltz. Speilberg will produce! Phoebe Cates will star! HOLLYWOOD MOVIE EXECUTIVE TWO Can we make the adorable critter so cute that every kid in America will…

I decided to suspend my Zip subscription for a few months. For those not in the know, Zip is a Canadian DVD-by-mail service, like Netflix in the US. You make a list of movies, and they are sent to your mailbox — return the DVD using the included envelope, and a new one is sent…