That is a brilliant analysis of how Cohen's humor works and what's problematic about it. Thank you!!

Yeah, whatever else "Borat" was commenting on, I never saw it as trying to undermine the image it creates of Kazakhstan as an uniformly awful, racist, backwater, poor (isn't that hilarious!?) place, and that (among other things) doesn't endear the movie to me.

In London, they're convenience stores. The quality ranking in London chain grocery shopping goes:

I was listening to the radio today and there was this ad, out of nowhere, that featured two stilted voices discussing how horrible their workplace had become because unions wouldn't let them negotiate for their salaries individually.

The book has a lot of footnotes (as Jordo mentioned above) and a great deal of historical detail, but I don't think Moore actually believes Gull was the killer.

Having just re-watched the series up to the start of Brosnan's tenure, I can also say that's a theme of GoldeneEye, too - or at least, its also pervaded with a strong sense of the sins of the past, of post-colonial, post-Cold War 'eyah….Britain did a lot of shit.'

My Dad has this thing where during every movie he watches, he points out how the characters' hair should, in reality, be messier than its shown to be. Every movie, like its noteworthy.

Yeah, as a 29-year-old, I consider one of the advantages of the medium is how it allows the recipient to respond at his/her convenience. It's kind of fascinating if the kids these days don't see it as such…

Vice president Mandy! It's the only twist that makes sense!

The first minute: laughed out loud a few times. The second minute: could go either way in context. I'm cautiously optimistic it will be likable on an opening night with a receptive audience.

The DVD even came with tickets to go see the movie in the theater. The idea was to build word-of-mouth and get the Saved to take their not-yet-Christian friends with them to the the theater. It did not pan out. "Shaking the World for Jesus" by Heather Hendershot tells the whole strange story - LaHaye and Jenkins…

Bob Jones wrote the script? No wonder he didn't allow television on his university's campus…

"Deeply unpleasant" is often right, though, as I mentioned, he strikes a better horror-comedy balance in Kingdom, which you may have a better experience with…

I didn't much care for 12 Years a Slave either. As a film unto itself, I respect its depiction of slavery's brutality; in the context of Steve McQueen's filmography, its just another exercise in indulging sadism, something he does so single-mindedly that I find it arbitrary.

I'll also chime in as being annoyed at how conventional Dramas are much easier to get labeled capital "I" Important than films without the pretension to realism. And lately, I think that applies to 12 Years a Slave - there were a shitton of great films that came out in 2013 that I'm hesitant to name any one film the…

I actually think Skyfall is a reasonably subversive commentary on modern espionage, in that throughout M explicitly argues for the leverage to operate with Prism-like power, unchecked, "in the shadows," going so far as to neglect to tell the government hearing that there are folks with guns coming - leveraging the…

My problem with White is less than he's contrararian and more that he usually doesn't develop his contrarian arguments. Like that takedown of Lumet sounds awesome, and I LIKE Lumet. And that's what good film criticism should do: encourage you to see film in a new way.

The Ryan character asking his wife to tell him that he's lived a good life at the end of the movie, surrounded by the cemetery, while the music soars: it turns the horror to righteous sacrifice.In a way, its worse than, say, "The Longest Day," which takes a simplistic rah-rah…

The Ryan character asking his wife to tell him that he's lived a good life at the end of the movie, surrounded by the cemetery, while the music soars: it turns the horror to righteous sacrifice.In a way, its worse than, say, "The Longest Day," which takes a simplistic rah-rah…

I went and listened to the song and I can't say I'd heard it before either. The riff sounds vaguely familiar, but I can't recall hearing it on the adult contemporary and rock stations of the various elevators and waiting rooms of the period. I'll consider it a glimpse of an alternate timeline of music popularity in…