Thanks for linking the RED HOOK SUMMER Q&A to the article, and I'm a bit surprised that it didn't get mentioned in the review, considering the digital ink spilled over Kevin Smith's performance art piece last year.

It's a gripping film that uses the pulpy premise to create a downbeat character study of  a steroid abusing farmer's cross over to the dark side of mobsterism.  The direction and photography are quite stylish as well.

Maybe it's because I cut my teeth on seventies films, but I like Apatow's digressive storytelling, particularly when it lets you see actors trained in improvisation hone their craft.  I don't get the whole brevity is a virtue thing.  Movie watching shouldn't feel like a root canal

The editing in BRIDESMAIDS key set pieces balanced the comedic tone and character development of the picture while also raising the dramatic stakes.  It would have been nice if the director planned for a more fluid visual style, but that would have not worked in favor of the improvisationally driven performances.

In Arkansas the problem you refer to is compounded by the case that the judge who tries the cases also hears the appeals, meaning that a trial judge has to allow himself to be convinced that he erred during the trial.  Apparently it was a new law pertaining to DNA review that created a loophole ultimately allowing for…

I'd noticed this reaction of women to Peckinpah (whose work I adore) and understand it.  The "crisis" in masculinity is a prominant theme in 70s Hollywood, but many of the prominant "auteurs" like Altman, Cassavettes, and even Scorsese, found a greater, more authentically emotional style of femininity than Coppola and…

I'd reiterate a point made earlier, that Redux really transforms the story into something more complex, but the original cut is more affective, as it simplifies Willard's motivations and adds scenes whose intentions remain murky and digressive.  Part of this is because two of the longer sequences were incomplete at…

The reduction in scope was by design apparently.  While the first half has a bunch of lousy stuff, once the movie gets to Sicily it becomes sort of a meta movie piece that stands, IMHO, alongside other Coppola nostalgic ruminations of the 80s and 90s. GIII works best when its not in Godfather mode but traveling in the…

I think you're right, but the film doesn't make that connection as clearly as it could.

I'd like to see a documentary reconstructing the investigation, explaining why the link to satanism became more plausible to Gitchell and the other detectives than the reasons you cite above.  The "moving target" aspect of the film's argumentation would have been less disengenous if the focus of the film was on the…

It's a diverting, lively crime thriller, if no classic.  Remaking it is rather unnecessary.

They've fallen off the home entertainment circuit, but THE TERMINAL MAN and DEMON SEED are essential for anyone checking out this sub-genre.  The nihilism of the former, directed by Mike Hodges, goes beyond anything else written by Crichton, but is probably the most visually controlled film of the genre next to…

How old was she when she did that?  Good luck getting that made today.

I agree with Cyentist that these elements are frustrating, but the strengths of the overall work more than compensate for these distractions.  What keeps the film fresh for me is the tension between the story being told from Noodles P.O.V. and how Leone's staging constantly reframes of the shots, shifting the focal…

I saw it as a Ghostbusters- like comedy about grief, and thus pleasantly subversive.  I suspect that the film's insistance that its characters react negatively, either by depression, or psychosis, to their exposure to the spiritual realm ultimately soured its producers to Jackson's vision, as their work tends to treat…

A bit of both, probably.  Dirty secret:  Every semester I find at least one cheater when using the software.  Because of the hassle of administrative processes (and, as a part time instructor, not wanting to be seen as a pain in the ass by the department), I just give an F on the assignment and average that in for the…

My policy is to drop students with 3 unexcused absences, so a D sounds rather generous.

Based on what I've seen at cultural studies conferences, O Neal's snark sounds like good old fashioned reporting.  Anyway, Good luck to Santana.

The AS piece doesn'r really add up into a substantial critique of the WM3's release.  It regurgitates cliches about Hollywood elites as a means to deflect the rather extensive refutation of the police's and prosecution's methods and theories raised by their critics.  If recent events are a travesty of justice, then…

Good observations on a flawed, but nevertheless ambitious and underrated film.  The points you make underscore a theme that links this to underly a large number of Eastwood's pictures:  How the face of heroism masks heavy internal conflict over personal identity.  It's less an historical recreation and more of a grand…