Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on March 16th, 2012
Carnage is the (un)true story of two couples who've agreed to meet in a Brooklyn apartment — drink together and have their lives filmed (by Roman Polanski) — to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. If you had told me that one day I would be relating a Roman Polanski film to the opening credits of MTV's The Real World, I would've told you...yeah, that sounds like something I would do.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on March 13th, 2012
I don't think I'm breaking any news when I say that director Paul W.S. Anderson's latest action spectacle, an update of Alexandre Dumas' classic The Three Musketeers, is junk. So far, the director has specialized in taking established properties — including the Resident Evil and Mortal Kombat videogames, as well as the Alien and Predator franchises — and re-working them to fit his own shallow, highly-stylized, quick-cutting sensibilities. The result is basically the cinematic equivalent of junk food: people know those Resident Evil movies are bad, but they just can't stop consuming them.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on March 12th, 2012
"What must it be like to be the most famous woman on Earth?"
In My Week with Marilyn, one character relays this very question — apparently asked recently by Queen Elizabeth II — to Marilyn Monroe herself. The main problem with this movie is that it is less interested in exploring that query with a great amount of depth, and more interested in answering the considerably less provocative question, "What is it like to hang out with someone super famous?" (That's what Entourage was for.)
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on March 12th, 2012
I like to think I know more than a little bit about sports. I wake up to Mike and Mike in the Morning, drive to work while listening to The Dan Patrick Show and rush home to catch Pardon the Interruption. I've played organized football, baseball, basketball and soccer throughout my life, and I always make the playoffs in my fantasy football leagues. (Let's skip the part where I've never actually won.) Unfortunately, I have somewhat of a blind spot for sports that are more popular outside the United States. As a result, I know very little about Formula One racing and I knew absolutely nothing about Brazilian F1 champion Ayrton Senna until I watched the engrossing and spectacularly thrilling documentary about his life.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on March 5th, 2012
Isn't it odd how movies with similar story lines tend to get released around the same time? For example, no one has gotten the urge to release another major motion picture with a volcano as its main antagonist since the Dante's Peak/Volcano Battle of 1997. (Though that might have more to do with the fact that, my slight soft spot for Dante's Peak notwithstanding, both those movies are terrible.) We've been treated to the Great Deep Impact/Armageddon Debate, dueling Truman Capote biopics and the upcoming Snow White Smackdown of 2012. In that same spirit, I'd like to unofficially — and belatedly — declare 2011 as the Year of Has Anyone Seen My Keys?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on March 2nd, 2012
"As a boy, I came to understand that two things marked my family: distinctive names and extreme stubbornness."
In fact, it was Thurgood Marshall's "extreme stubbornness" in the face of racial inequality that led to his name becoming synonymous with the civil rights movement and to his 1967 appointment as the United States Supreme Court's first African-American justice. Marshall's remarkable life story is told in Thurgood, a sensational one-man show starring Laurence Fishburne that previously aired on HBO and was filmed before a live audience at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater in Washington, D.C.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on February 27th, 2012
Carlos Santana is too cool for words. When I say that, I refer to both his widely-acknowledged status as a "Guitar God" and to the fact that he doesn't utter a single word until the 21-minute mark of his latest concert film, Santana — Live at Montreux 2011. Santana may not be chatty, but he and the rest of his eponymous band do a valiant job of holding your attention throughout most of this 167-minute concert in Montreux (which is in Switzerland, and I'm only a little ashamed to admit I had no idea where Montreux was located before I watched this disc).
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on February 24th, 2012
After watching The Son of No One, I'm afraid I have some good news and (significantly more) bad news. The good news is that I get to say the following sentence for the first time in at least ten years: Al Pacino was probably the best thing in this movie. The bad news is Pacino has only a relatively tiny role in this dramatically stagnant crime drama that ends up squandering a talented cast, a vividly-realized setting and some interesting ideas.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on February 21st, 2012
I completely understand if you bailed out on Weeds a long time ago. The fact is the current show bears little resemblance to the subversive, suburban sitcom that became one of Showtime's first comedy smashes. That's partly because the tone of the show took a dark turn into Mexican cartels and human trafficking after the end of season 3. Even worse, the once-fresh characters had become, at
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on February 16th, 2012
Despite their pop culture ubiquity these days, zombies are getting somewhat of a raw deal. To be clear, I'm talking about the old-school, George Romero-style creatures that slowly lumbered toward their victims and whose only ambition in life was to snack on human flesh. Nowadays, a lot of filmmakers seem to be more interested in making zombie movies that don't technically have "zombies" in them ("infected" is a popular alternative term) and who are almost fast enough to earn a spot on their country's track and field squad for this summer's Olympic games.
