Comment Archives: stories: Film: Film Reviews
Re: “Jim Carrey's Delayed Gay Con-Man Caper, Just in Time for Christmas”
so hard to believe poor,poor,jim carey what has happen to you i guess you say if you can't beat 'em join 'em,sorry jim thiers not enough money in thissssss lifetime .
Re: “Mark Kostabi: Self-Conning Con Artist”
Knowing Mark through one of his right hand guys, he once drew several pieces of artwork on a napkin for me. Underneath the hype that he created, he is an extremely talented artist. The people who work(ed) in his factory did so willingly. Perhaps one could say that he hid his talent behind the factory walls because he was uncomfortable being himself. He did say Picasso was minor artist...which is exactly how he felt about his talent. That would put them in the same (brilliant) category. Hmmm.
Re: “A Scarier, Sexier Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1)”
You make me want to see this movie!
Re: “A Scarier, Sexier Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1)”
SEX IN SILVER BODY PAINT! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOA
Re: “Mark Kostabi: Self-Conning Con Artist”
Monsieur Sutton!
To my way of thinking; you have failed to grasp the actual reality behind the common misperception of who and what Mark Kostabi is! This was less of a review of "Con Artist" than a seeming debasement and superficial attack against Mark. Reminds me of the movie "Ridicule". In any case; perhaps you might fancy reading my own Review of this movie at my own Blog site (Just go to the links page at The Free Advice Man website: which is easy to find by simply placing "The Free Advice Man" in either Yahoo or Google search engines.
I wonder what you will do to me when "The Guru of Greenwich Village" comes out!
On a positive note: I found your pseudo-review interesting enough to comment on.
Best,
JP
The Original NYC Free Advice Man
Re: “The Exorcise Tapes”
Love this stuff, and your essay. First time I was ever questioned by a psychologist (drugs, was a teen, go figure) I was asked if I ever heard voices. I said, well, after The Exorcist something repeated in my 6 year old or so brain; it said "You love the Devil," ad nauseum. Which I fought off with some kind of Star Wars ontological mantra methods. Didn't we all??? I said?... He didn't like that answer. HA! Bravo Ben.
Re: “The Exorcise Tapes”
Have you guys seen these Chat Roulette reactions to the Last Exorcism prank? HAHA I haven't laughed this hard in a while this is f-ing great! http://bit.ly/catJ8g
Re: “Suicide and the Indian Farmer (A Comedy).”
Thanks, Mom!
Re: “Suicide and the Indian Farmer (A Comedy).”
Rarely does a review grab my undivided attention; however, this review of "Suicide and the Indian Farmer" held my complete attention -- very refreshing, unique and well-written piece! Looking forward to seeing the film based on this insightful, interesting review by John Sylva.
Re: “Oliver Stone in a Che Guevara T-Shirt”
Enter at http://cheguevara-fanclub.blogspot.com/ and leave a comment about Che Guevara
Your comment will be published in a book about Che Guevara
Best comment will receive a free book
Fanclub Che Guevara
Re: “Co-Starring Richard Wagner As a Laser-Shooting Nazi Frankenstein (But Why, Why?)”
What happened here? Were all the writers who don't completely despise Ken Russell busy? Granted, you don't have to be a drooling fanboy or anything, but maybe a little less vitriol is warranted in a three page article.
It's totally possible to like both Ken Loach AND Ken Russell films, by the way.
Re: “Co-Starring Richard Wagner As a Laser-Shooting Nazi Frankenstein (But Why, Why?)”
I'm sorry you can't appreciate the self-evident visual brilliance of Russell's films; TOMMY, which you dismiss as "diverting spectacle," is one of the most beautifully orchestrated color films ever made. Your other objections seem either wrong (you're so preoccupied with the "crudity" of his shock effects that you fail to notice his use of complex tonal counterpoints and intriguingly ambivalent characterizations) or just absurd (how can you possibly dismiss his symbolist fantasy sequences for violating "factual fidelity"? That would have been a laughably philistine reaction in 1970).
And Ken Russell has much more than "a few" admirers: filmmakers as different as Derek Jarman (his former set designer), David Lynch, Leos Carax, Todd Haynes and Baz Luhrmann have referenced Russell's films in their own work. It saddens me that this review will end up convincing a few people not to see these films, while adding little to our critical understanding of Russell.
Re: “Only in New York, Folks!”
Do walk across the street to the W.C. Fields Exhibit at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.
The glorious Hollywood on Hudson series was screened at the 27th Pordenone Silent Film Festival, where all our grandfather's silent films were featured. "So's Your Old Man" after viewing in Italy, became the latest film of our grandfather added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.
How glorious we have such riches among us now this summer in New York.
Do visit our Official W.C. Fields Web site www.wcfields.com for more information.
Dr. Harriet A. Fields (only granddaughter)
Re: “Hack Headline Writer Says: "Not So Despicable, You"”
Nice gauge of the commercial pulse.
Re: “The Documentary Film As Pharmaceuticals Infomercial”
For a couple of years I have been getting copies of "L" and distributing them among family, friends and people I come in contact with on the streets, buses and trains in NYC. After reading this so called "review", I WILL NEVER PICK UP ANOTHER "L" magazine. I have not seen the Burzynski movie but I am well acquainted with Dr. Burzynski and the persecution of him and other alternative practitioners by the FDA, Big Pharma and the AMA who want to shut them down because they interfer with their profit making, killing protocols. Why? Because they actually cure people with their treatments instead of killing them. The AMA has documented 100,000 American citizens being killed every year by standard medical treatments. At age 21, doctors wanted to take out my uterus (I had fibroid tumors) and cut off my breast to prevent cancer in the future. In your ignorance, I'm sure you are not aware of an NIH program to remove the uterus of African American, Native American and Puerto Rican women to reduce ther population growth. I suppose the doctors and nurses who tried to convince me to have those procedures thought I was as STUPID as they were. I am age 62, with my uterus and breast because I changed my eating habits, became vegetarian and do not use any commercial "beauty" products since most of them contain cancer causing agents. You probably don't know that either. Evidently the truth is irrelevant to you and you are very dangerous because your writing may turn people away from life saving treatments and send them to off to be tortured with chemo and radiation and dying horrific deaths because of it. Journalism obviously is not your forte. Try Data Entry. NO THINKING REQUIRED, just type what is in front of you. You would be instrumental in saving many lives if you change careers ASAP.
Re: “Charlie Chaplin vs. Clint Eastwood”
Due to space limitations I couldn't quite expound on the point I only briefly raised, but in essence I find it highly questionable that the Monsieur Verdoux character takes the world to task for its systematic violence and then defends his own killing of women on the grounds that he was just supporting his wife and child: "Wars, conflict -- it's all business. One murder makes a villain; millions, a hero." I'm pretty sure the majority of the human race considers Adolf Hitler a villain.
Re: “Charlie Chaplin vs. Clint Eastwood”
"... hypocritical black serial killing comedy Monsieur Verdoux ..."
Hypocritical? OK, not finding The Great Dictator funny is a matter of opinion, but the above comment on MV makes no sense. But I'll bite, how is making a serial killer film hypocritical?
Re: “The Last Airbender: Night Has Fallen”
I agree that "The Village" is "beautiful without sound"--REALLY beautiful--and for me that's always been enough to have a soft spot for Shyamalan; ditto for Atom Egoyan. And so I think that M Night's best movie is "The Happening," if you can forget Leguizamo's scenes, because Mark Wahlberg is smart enough to have read the script, seen how stupid it was, and to play it as a comedy. He's as funny as he was through Huckabees through the whole thing, Shyamalan's pretty compositions, etc. are in tact, and there's even a wacky environmentalist subtext to enjoy! If you watch it through Wahlberg's perspective--well-meaning and light-hearted--instead of Shyamalan/Leguizamo--world-changing and histrionic--it's a great movie.
Re: “Support the Troops: Make Better Documentaries”
Henry, thanks for the response.
You write, "All films come out of some kind of ideology". What does this mean? Obviously, all films are the products of humans with aims. Equally obviously, all films come from a "point of view" in that they convey a limited range of information. A video-taped lecture on the mechanics of engines "come[s] out of some kind of ideology" in these two senses. I assume that you have a more interesting sense of the relevant phrase in mind. What is it?
Of course, you don't need the sweeping claim that all films "come out of a point of view" for your purposes. You can argue that Resptrepo in particular does this without arguing that all films do. But you failed to respond to the main reason that I offered for thinking that Restrepo doesn't "come out of a point of view" in any interesting sense -- namely, that it does not even *feign* to be objective. If I want to manipulate you into believing p via my film, then I will at least offer a cartoon of the perspective of those who reject p in the film, and I'll suggest in the film that that perspective is bad. If all goes well, you'll think that you've seen the whole picture regarding p and can rightfully conclude that p. But it would be inane of me to try to manipulate you into believing p by literally *only* offering the perspective of advocates of p and doing nothing whatever to indicate, let alone undermine, the perspective of advocates of not-p. Obviously, there will be advocates of not-p for any interesting proposition, p. This is all the more obvious when p is (something like) the proposition that Americans should be at war in Afghanistan, and so many Afghans vocally endorse not-p. The effect of a film that literally just presented the perspective of advocates of p would be to leave the (non-idiot) viewer at best agnostic as to whether p -- since he would know full well that there's another side of the story about which he's heard nothing. In all likelihood, then, a film that only presents a single perspective on an issue -- without even presenting a cartoon of the opposite perspective -- is not trying to get you to take a stand on the issue at all. It's trying to do something else. In the case of Restrepo, what I suggested that the film is trying to do is give you a sense of the experience of American soldiers in a physically and morally overwhelming situation. But, even if that's wrong, the point of Restrepo can't sympathetically be thought to be to get across a pro-American message regarding the war in Afghanistan -- given that it doesn't even pretend to tell you what you need to know to evaluate that message.
