Tag Archives: movies

“The Sadist”

Paleo Retiree writes: Ultra low-budget — shot in two weeks for $33,000 —  b&w psycho-killer thriller with Arch Hall, Jr. as the nutcase, written and directed by James Landis, and set almost entirely in an automobile junkyard in the California … Continue reading

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“Tiny Furniture”

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes: Lena Dunham has deflected attempts to categorize her work as mumblecore. Watching her “Tiny Furniture” I understood why: the picture is tightly scripted and controlled, a caterpillar-like series of awkward-comic vignettes that never lapses into navel gazing … Continue reading

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“Bandits of Orgosolo”

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes: I enjoyed this late Neorealist film directed by Vittorio De Seta. (What a name for an Italian filmmaker to be cursed with!) It deals with the attempts of a Sardinian shepherd to evade the law after … Continue reading

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Joss Whedon’s Disney’s “Marvel’s The Avengers”

Sax von Stroheim writes: I finally caught up with the year’s biggest hit. I’m a longtime reader of super-hero comics, and while the Avengers comics by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, et al. aren’t my favorites from Marvel’s Silver Age, I … Continue reading

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Listing Movies: Vintage Martial Arts

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes: Do you like movie lists as much as I do? They seem to me to be a great way to explore movie history — perhaps even the only way. A fledgling movie buff could do a lot worse … Continue reading

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“Life Without Principle”

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes: Johnnie To’s latest, entitled “Life Without Principle,” combines the financial-and-business-sector setting of his last film, the romantic comedy “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” with his customary gangster milieu. It’s organized around the Greek debt crisis, which … Continue reading

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DVD Review: “The Departed”

Paleo Retiree writes: I sat all the way through Martin Scorsese’s 2006 movie even though I never felt more than half-involved with it. It’s a remake of the Hong Kong thriller “Infernal Affairs,” and it’s in Scorsese’s exuberant, burning-in-hell, “Goodfellas” … Continue reading

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“The Abyss”

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes: “The Abyss” features one of the most striking opening shots in early cinema (it was released in 1910). Taken from the center of a busy urban street, it shows a woman walking away from the camera as … Continue reading

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“Thor”

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes: Kenneth Branagh has directed “Thor” with the sort of gloppy boyishness that I’ve sometimes enjoyed in his acting. The tone is consistently breathless, jaunty even, and not a frame of it is underworked. I took it as an … Continue reading

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“Juliette”

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes: In the 1951 “Juliette” Marcel Carne attempts to evoke Cocteau but mostly succeeds in calling attention to his unCocteauness. The movie is gauche where it needs to be lyrical, deliberate where it needs to be suggestive. … Continue reading

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