Reaction Shots

" Affleck! You da bomb in Phantoms, yo !" Jason Mewes (well, Kevin Smith, if we’re being honest), Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back... dunno how Jay'd feel about his boy in Hypnotic . Full disclosure: I really like Robert Rodriguez’s work. He is, at best, a really good storyteller; his family fare is engaging and his more outre, gonzo stuff is as the kids say, “awesome”…until it’s not. The critical faculties kick in and either Rodriguez is trafficking in ambiguity or scenes that are intended to be earnest and/or sincere, elicit snickers and sometimes barely stifled belly laughs. From me, anyway (and I like his work!) Hypnotic is his latest release and out of deference to the filmmaker’s request, I won’t go into spoiler territory. As Robert said in his introduction, it is “twisty” but more in the sense of curlicues as opposed to spirals of ingenuity and plot turns. It is, and I mean this in the best possible way, a pulpmeister’s version of Inception . In fact, chances are go...

Going into “Air” was a comfortable sense that Affleck and Damon were going to deliver the goods. I wasn’t expecting “Good Will Hunting” or “The Last Duel”. For that matter, I was pretty sure the closest I’d get in tone might be “Ford v. Ferrari” and while that film is masterful and entertaining, “Air” is likewise, in its own way the result of one of the more solid collaborations in Hollywood and it is certainly entertaining. We know how the story is going to end, Nike is going to be the almost exclusive brand of the NBA, Michael Jordan is going to become, of course, the Michael Jordan, and so associated with the brand as to be synonymous. Of course, it’s all in the telling and the film clocks in at an efficient hour and fifty or so with one of the most 80s of set design. The film is so 1984 (the year, not the Orwell) that when we first see Damon as Sonny Vaccaro in high school, the initial texture of the degraded colorization (footage was transferred to, get this, thirty years old ...

“Shazam! Shazam! Shazam!” - Gomer Pyle, USMC The comic book superhero genre has been with us since 1938 when Siegel and Shuster’s extraterrestrial descended from the world of Krypton and got the ball rolling. National Comics launched Superman in Action Comics #1 and would shortly follow up with giving him his eponymous book and before long, Detective Comics #27 would introduce Batman, or more accurately, The Batman a few months later. 1939 would see Timely Comics bring The Human Torch and Namor, the Sub-Mariner into popular consciousness and Fawcett Comics would grace the world with C.C. Beck and Bill Parker’s Captain Marvel in Whiz Comics #2 (well cover dated 1940, but actually composed in 1939.) Actions Comics #1 - the one that started it all Whiz Comics #2 - the first appearance of Captain Marvel, later “Shazam” It wouldn’t be long before these characters would leap from the page and onto the screen. The first was, in fact, Capt. Marvel in Republic Pictures’ The Adventures of Ca...

A fever dream born of trauma, dissolution, anger, hatred, and resentment fused with an emotional pitch on the order of Bergman’s “Scenes from a Marriage” and the dread of Cronenberg’s “The Brood” with a little of Lynch’s “Eraserhead” thrown in for good measure does nothing to prepare anyone for   Andrzej Zulawski‘s 1981 film “Possession.” I’ve waited years for this and have watched Metrograph’s 4K restoration twice already.   I’m genuinely at a loss. It’s one of the most searingly brilliant films I’ve ever seen with Isabelle Adjani’s performance holding the center. If I’m hesitant to say it is her greatest performance, it’s only because her range is so vast and she is so versatile. And yet, perhaps it is her best, in the same way Deniro’s Jake Lamotta in “Raging Bull” is often referred to as his greatest turn (or should we go with Travis Bickle?) In any case, “great” might be a less reprehensible word than “best” but the point is that what Adjani gave here is supreme. The ana...