If you know me or if you read the site, you probably wouldn’t think of me as someone who was into the lovey-dovey romance movies. Truth is, while I really get sickened by the ridiculously cheesy and unrealistic “rom-coms” that are mass produced to steal the incomes of a multitude of tissue-wielding women, I can admit that I enjoy a well-done romance movie from time to time. I’ve never been much of a relationship kind of person, but have still been considered something of a romantic, and so long as the movie is entertaining and doesn’t get out of hand, I’m down for a viewing!

Enter The Good Guy: a new film from Roadside Attractions and director Julio DePietro about a young, seemingly-perfect couple living the big city life. The movie debuted last year at the Tribeca Film Festival and follows Beth (Alexis Bledel), a sweet and beautiful young woman with a good job and a great group of friends in New York City. [...]

Edge of Darkness
Directed by Martin Campbell
Staring Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston
Rated R
Release date: January 29, 2010

It has been exactly eight years since Mel Gibson headlined his own movie (and if you guessed Signs, you get shiny bonus points) but that does not mean he hasn’t been in the spotlight. When he was not directing movies depicting Jesus’ death or Mayans, he was caught in one drunken scandal after another. Hollywood is a strange place though and everyone is one hit movie away from being a hot property again. Perhaps Edge of Darkness, a revenge story set in Boston, is just what he is looking for.

Gibson stars as grizzled cop Thomas Craven, a devoted single father to his little girl Emma (Bojana Novakovic). During a trip home to see Thomas, Emma is taken, shot and killed by a masked assailant right at his front door. Led to believe this act was committed by a criminal from his past, Thomas spirals into grief and madness knowing he had a hand in his little girl’s death. However, when evidence comes up that perhaps the killer was targeting Emma all along, Grief begets violence as Thomas does whatever it takes to uncover the whole truth [...]

Avatar
Directed by James Cameron
Staring Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Released date: December 18, 2009

James Cameron’s Avatar has been in development for more years than some of its viewers have been alive. This has been a passion project for Cameron, and much like Peter Jackson’s King Kong, it’s nice to see him finally complete the film, if only so he can move on to other projects I’d like to see (cough, Battle Angel, cough). Now that it’s out, is the movie worth the wait and the hype we’ve gone through before its release?

Paralyzed ex-Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) finds himself in a unique situation when he is given the chance to take over for his recently deceased twin brother and take part in the Avatar program. The goal of the Avatar program is to explore the planet of Pandora and increase diplomatic relations with the indigenous population of the planet, a group of people called the Na’vi. The Avatar program allows humans to walk around in genetically engineered Na’vi bodies, which they then use to explore the planet and interact with the locals. The Na’vi are tall humanoids with blue skin and mostly cat-like features that are very reminiscent of Native Americans in their culture. They are very in tune with the land, and as with the Native Americans, their village is sitting on top of a large amount of valuable metal that a large corporation wants to get their hands on. Jake is able to take his brother’s place on the team because they are genetically duplicate, so he is shipped off to Pandora, even though he’s not a scientist. The company wants to put his military training to use by having him get intel on the Na’vi village so they can invade and remove them. Of course, Jake is able to gain a place in the tribe, where he comes to identify with them and eventually seeks to protect them [...]

12 Angry Men – **** (Classic Movie)
Directed by Sidney Lumet
Starring Martin Balsam, John Fiedler, Lee J. Cobb, E. G. Marshall, Jack Klugman, Edward Binns, Jack Warden, Henry Fonda, Joseph Sweeney, Ed Begley, George Voskovec, Robert Webber

Twelve men walk into a smoldering, small, fan-less room. They are a jury and have to make their decision on whether or not an 18-year-old boy who stabbed his father to death is guilty or not guilty. We only see outside of the small room for 3 minutes (secondhand learning of the case, never any flashbacks) and in one of the scenes it shows the judge telling the jury to make their decision in a bored tone voice. He knows that the jury is going to vote “not-guilty,” but he’s wrong. Most of them are thinking that this is going to be a half-hour meeting. Some light up their cigarettes, open the windows to get a whiff of fresh air, and sit back ready to make their vote. The foreman of it all then lays down the rules that there has to be a unanimous decision and then asks to hear everyone’s verdict. Eleven hands go up for claiming the boy guilty, which would lead to the boy getting sentenced to the electric chair, but one lone hand is proudly raised for not guilty.

This room consists of all types of prejudices, anger, and souls that seem to be heading in the wrong direction. The lone voter is played by Henry Fonda. He has to battle and reason with these men until they decide to come over and see his point of the murder [...]

Up In The Air
Directed by Jason Reitman
Starring George Clooney, Jason Bateman, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick
Release date: December 4, 2009 (limited)

Up In The Air: Life In The Descent

The beauty of getting lost at the movies is that it allows us to visit worlds vastly different from our own. It is the greatest exercise in being a fly on the wall. It is the ultimate act of voyeurism. Going to the movies, listening to an album or reading a book are some of the greatest trips we will ever take in our lives. Jason Reitman’s Up In The Air is one of those experiences. Before I go any further, it must be stated that Jason Reitman is his own man. He stepped out of his father’s shadow as soon his first feature, Thank You For Smoking, was released in 2006. He followed that with Juno in 2007 and the rest, as they say, is history. While it helps to be Ivan Reitman’s son in order to have a shot in this business, you have to have talent and hunger to survive in this industry; Jason Reitman has both in spades. He is three for three as far as directing films is concerned. The nepotism claim can be thrown away. He, like Nick Cassavetes, Jake Kasdan, and especially Sofia Coppola have forged their identities in the entertainment business. A famous last name can only get one so far, you have to have the talent and skills to truly survive and endure in the film business [...]

The Strip
Directed by Jameel Khan
Starring Dave Foley, Jenny Wade, Rodney Scott, Billy Aaron Brown, Federico Dordei, Cory Christmas, Noreen DeWulf, Chelcie Ross
Bata Films
Rated PG-13
Release Date: December 4, 2009 (limited)

The Strip is a new independent film from Bata Films that tells the story of a group of small-town retail store workers trying to find themselves. It’s a story that we’ve seen before, but that works on many different levels, as witnessed in movies like Clerks, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Waiting. What differentiates it from movies like that is its open subtlety. The movie doesn’t rush anywhere or get too out of hand, and though hilarious in the movies mentioned, it avoids the constant swearing and adult themes as much as possible in an attempt to thrive on being what it is: just a simple tale of a few lives looking to rediscover their true paths.

The Strip refers to a strip mall where a little store called Electri-City is located. It’s a blatant Radio Shack ripoff, and sells many generic brand products that no one has ever heard of, but because people love cheap crap, they do have customers…sometimes. This branch is run by the manager, Glenn (Dave Foley). He obviously has the passion and the drive, but you can tell he’s in a bit of a mid-life crisis, though he’d never admit it. He makes an effort in raising sales numbers by trying trust exercises with his team, such as all holding hands and trying to untie themselves. Unfortunately, these exercises aren’t completely successful due to the fact that his staff is a grab bag of varying personalities that don’t exactly mesh together well. [...]

Fantastic Mr. Fox
Directed by Wes Anderson
Voiced by George Clooney, Bill Murray, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Willem Dafoe, Wallace Wolodarsky, Eric Anderson, Michael Gambon, Owen Wilson, Jarvis Cocker
Release date: November 25, 2009

My relationship with the movies of Wes Anderson can best be described as strained, to say the least. I have a sympathetic ear for the dysfunction he makes his characters wallow in each movie, but aren’t they all really just singing the same song?; that a family, no matter how damaged and quirky, can get through anything as long as they stick together? He has a definitive style, but more and more I get the impression that he is really telling a variation of the same story and trying to hide it by out-weirding the last one. Considering it to be my loudest objection to his movies, I find it curious that one of the biggest compliments I can give Fantastic Mr. Fox is that it feels like a Wes Anderson movie.

The children’s novel by Roald Dahl that the movie is based on is pretty straightforward. Mr. Fox steals chickens, turkeys, and cider from three wealthy nearby farmers. The farmers band together to try to ambush and kill him. He escapes with his family but ends up trapped and starving. After a spell he hatches a plan to create an underground safe haven and steal from them again out from under their noses while they wait for him to emerge [...]

Ninja Assassin

Directed by James McTeigue

Written by Matthew Sand and J Michael Straczynski

Starring Rain, Naomie Harris, Sho Kosugi

Rated R

Release Date: November 25, 2009

When I chose to review Ninja Assassin, I knew it would entertain me on some level just by the name alone. I mean, how can you mess up something like Ninja Assassin? Other than Hot Librarian or Free Wi-Fi, no two words in the English language have ever been more of a perfect fit for one another. Good or bad, it has to be fun to watch, at least on a primal, blood-letting level.

Raizo (Rain) is one angry ninja and who can blame him? First, he is kidnapped at a young age by the mysterious Ozunu Clan and trained to be a silent, death-dealing assassin for hire. Then, just when he decides to forgo killing a person at the request of his master, his clan turns their back on him and leaves him for dead. With revenge on his mind and the aid of a government agent (Naomie Harris), Raizo seeks to destroy his Clan and the Master who he once called family.

The story, written by Matthew Sand and J Michael Straczynski, provides an interesting dose of Japanese-style violence with the standard “lone wolf experiences love and loss” flashbacks into Raizo’s past. The fleshed out back-story is necessary for viewers who feel unfulfilled without one but is not needed. If you are watching a movie named Ninja Assassin, story and plot is not high on your list. Like this reviewer, you want to know if the movie delivers with their action sequences, and deliver it does, with bloody gusto [...]

Twilight: New Moon
Directed by Chris Weitz
Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner
Rated PG-13
Release date: November 20, 2009

So after much anticipation, this weekend I got my first look at The Twilight Saga – New Moon, and it did not disappoint. The opening scene in the meadow is as ethereal and beautiful as it is haunting, as Bella (Kristen Stewart) continues to agonize over aging while her glorious vampire love Edward (Robert Pattinson) stays forever seventeen and refuses to change her, afraid that he will damn her soul for all eternity.

Director Chris Weitz really raised the bar in this film as compared to its predecessor. The vampires are much more realistic, with beautiful pale skin and honey amber eyes — except of course, for the non-vegetarian Volturi and bad vamps, whose red eyes are far superior to the somewhat cartoonish ones in Twilight. The background and scenery in the Forks scenes are much better, filled with lush green forests and bright gray clouded skies.

It is at Forks High School that we see Edward Cullen and Bella Swan on Bella’s 18th birthday, watching Romeo and Juliet. Foreshadowing the events to come, Edward explains to Bella how envious he is of humans’ ability to commit suicide and how he had considered it when James had attacked her in Twilight. The first mention of the Volturi is made here, and we soon learn more about this royal vampire clan [...]

A Christmas Carol
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Starring Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman
Rated PG
Release date: November 6, 2009

It happens every year, almost without fail. Christmas day comes around and as I am tearing through my presents there is always that one gift. You know the one where the person giving it to you is so excited they hold it back so you have to open it last so they can make a big spectacle of it. Usually the bigger deal they make, the more I dread it. Not because I am ungrateful, but my appreciation hardly ever matches their excitement. Then there’s that whole awkward exchange where they think you don’t like it and you tell them you do but they don’t buy it because they were super excited but you weren’t as excited and… ugh. Robert Zemeckis’ adaptation of the Charles Dickens story, A Christmas Carol is that present. So impatient is he to show off his gift to us that he’s overlooked the fact that it’s little more than a big turd in fancy wrapping.

The story is the same as it’s been for the past 165 years. On Christmas Eve night, Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey) is visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future during which time he experiences a moment of clarity and eventual redemption. As a story Zemeckis plays it by the book (literally), but as a movie, this thing is all over the place [...]

The Box
Director Richard Kelly
Starring Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella
Rated PG-13
Release date: November 6, 2009 (wide)

Richard Kelly’s third film, The Box, is based on the short story Button, Button by Richard Matheson which later became a segment on an episode of The Twilight Zone. If you know nothing about the movies that Kelly has written and directed then you watched The Box because it has Cameron Diaz in it and you thought it looked interesting you will have the same reaction to it even if you’re already familiar with his movies and knew what you were getting in to. If you are part of the latter group, you know that reaction because you’ve been here before.

Living in fairly affluent Virginia suburb in 1976, Arthur (James Marsden) and Norma Lewis (Diaz) appear to be living the American dream. They have a nice house, good jobs, their son seems well behaved, and they even have a pre-midlife crisis Corvette. All is well in the house of Lewis, but things are starting to unravel behind the scenes. Norma finds out the discount program her job offers for their son’s private school tuition will be discontinued. The same day, Arthur finds out that he has been rejected from the astronaut program; something we get the impression everyone thought was a foregone conclusion [...]

A Christmas Carol
Disney Digital 3D
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Starring Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Bob Hoskins
Rated PG
Release date: November 6, 2009

Even though I haven’t even put the Halloween decorations away, this past Friday I went to see Disney’s A Christmas Carol because, well, it combines two of my favorite things: Disney and Christmas! I chose the Disney Digital 3D version as opposed to the IMAX version, since I had my 5-year-old, Mini CrueChik, and my 8-year-old, WiiDude (he picked that tag, is he cool or what?), with me and I thought the IMAX version would be too intense, mostly for the little one.

Disney’s version of the classic Charles Dickens tale did not disappoint. The opening scenes, with credits still rolling, were absolutely breathtaking, flying over a snow covered Dickensian London. Your first glimpse of Ebenezer Scrooge comes as he’s grumping down the street, humbugging at carolers and children playing in the snow. Scrooge is voiced by Jim Carrey, whose face is definitely hidden in the animation of the ultimate miser.

The beginning of the story was a little slow for Mini CrueChik and WiiDude, but I appreciated Disney giving a little backstory on just how screwed up Scrooge is, like seeing him remove the tuppence from the eyes of the corpse Jacob Marley, his lifelong friend and business partner, before allowing the undertaker to take him away (eww) [...]

Law Abiding Citizen
Director F. Gary Gray
Starring Gerard Butler, Jaime Foxx, Colm Meaney
Rated R
Release date: October 16, 2009

I love stupid mindless revenge movies. Man on Fire, Payback, Taken; pretty much any movie where a guy is driven to kill as many people as necessary in the name of some kind of justice. Most of these movies are not what I would call great movies, but when done well, they’re all fun, and they appeal to a certain part of me that wishes that the kind of uncompromising justice portrayed in these films would work in the real world. The realistic part of me understands that it wouldn’t, but who wouldn’t like to see righteous justice handed down to those who deserve it. Law Abiding Citizen is now resides in a warm place in my heart along with the rest of these films. Is it perfect? Hardly. Does it have plot holes you could drive a truck through? Definitely. Is it going to win any kind of awards? Certainly not. Did I have a fun time watching it? Hell yeah! And sometimes, that’s enough for me.

In the film, Gerard Butler plays Clyde Shelton, a man who is forced to watch his wife and daughter brutally murdered in front of him, and then sees the justice system break down as the man who actually killed his family is given a reduced sentence so that callous District Attorney Nick Rice, played by Jaime Foxx, can keep his high conviction percentage. Unfortunately, Shelton is a very driven man who has the skill, intelligence, and determination to see his revenge through to the end. From there, we get the standard game of cat and mouse, as Clyde continually shows that he is smarter than Rice, as the bodies keep piling up in brutal fashion [...]

A Serious Man – *1/2
Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Sari Lennick, Peter Breitmayer, Fred Melamed
Release date: October 31, 2009

The Coen Brothers‘ catalogue of films displays verification, in the grander scheme of things, of how meager and unimportant human life actually is. Verification also of our incompetency as humans to realize what awaits us. To quote a line from the Coens’ film No Country for Old Men, “you can’t stop what’s comin’.”

Joel and Ethan Coen love to show their characters being submissive to the realms of evil; accepting what is coming to them regardless of the outcome. The perilous paths they travel down usually have connotations resembling desperation, greed and envy, all of which can lead to death. Acting against these overt connotations becomes imperative to the characters, almost to a point where discerning them becomes a natural instinct to ensure the longevity that life offers us. By not taking any action against these explicit sins a logical story cannot bloom, leaving an audience in dismay at what they just watched.

Stiffened in the fate that causes him to question his entire being, Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a middle-aged man married with two children in suburbia Minnesota circa 1967, is falling through a portal of infinite darkness, plunging full throttle into this pool of black and not possessing the slightest will of halting this bleak voyage [...]

Astro Boy
Directed by David Bowers
Featuring the voices of Nicolas Cage, Kristen Bell, Freddie Highmore
Written by David Bowers and Timothy Harris
Release Date: October 23, 2009

I learned several things Saturday morning when I watched Astro Boy. For one thing, when watching a cartoon movie, one should expect a sea of crying, whispering, and gurgling children no matter what time the movie starts. Another thing I learned, and this one is pretty important for me, is that no matter how old I get, it is nice to know that I still can be affected by a cartoon that has heart.

Astro Boy, based on the popular Japanese anime Mighty Atom, tells the tale of Tobie Tenama (Freddie Highmore). Tobie is caught in a middle of dangerous science experiment conducted by his father Dr. Bill Tenama (Nicolas Cage) and is killed instantly. Dr. Tenama is devastated and in his sorrow, he creates an exact robotic copy of his boy. Thus, Astro Boy is born.

Now a fair warning to those who are familiar with the anime: I had no prior knowledge of the anime before I stepped into the movie [...]

The sonic fury of a film’s soundtrack is integral to its lasting presence. The soundtrack to Drew Barrymore’s Whip It is a furiously beautiful compliment to this potent and rousing coming of age film. Barrymore understands the importance of a film’s soundtrack. She understands how vital the musical component is to the film. All one has to do is read her note that she wrote for the soundtrack album:

“Music is the soundtrack to our lives, and when you put music and film together, it is a powerful combination.”

“This soundtrack is my mix tape for you.”

Drew Barrymore gets it. She understands the relationship between music and film. While watching the film, I would crack a smile as songs by The Breeders, Tilly And The Wall, The Ramones, The Chordettes, Dolly Parton, Peaches, and many others would blare out during the film’s many magical and cathartic moments. A good soundtrack is essentially an awesome mix tape. Drew Barrymore understands this all too well for her directorial debut.

The Whip It soundtrack is not the only great mix tape this year; the soundtracks for (500) Days Of Summer and Inglourious Basterds are incredible mix tapes as well. As far as Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds goes, his choices of music from Ennio Morricone scores and other film scores is never to be messed with under any conditions. I doubt I will ever be able to listen Nick Perito’s “The Green Leaves Of Summer” without thinking of the opening credits of the Tarantino film. The other tracks on the album are just as powerful. It’s Tarantino’s magical energy to take another film’s music and make it his own. His soundtracks for all of his films are the perfect mix tapes for cinephiles — not only do we want to discover where the music comes from, we want to discover the actual films. Marc Webb’s (500) Days Of Summer may be the finest mix tape since Zach Braff’s Garden State and every Cameron Crowe film, especially the soundtracks to Almost Famous and Singles [...]

Zombieland
Directed by Ruben Fleischer
Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin
Rated R
Release date: October 2, 2009

I love horror movies and I also love comedies, so blend the two genres and you immediately have my interest, even if the final product is shockingly subpar. Just about every subgenre of horror, from mad scientist movies (Re-Animator) to werewolf movies (An American Werewolf in London) to even vampire movies (The Lost Boys), has seen their decaying shelf lives increased thanks to a lightning bolt to the heart in the form of some much-needed humor. When the horror movie monsters of old have outlived their usefulness, what better to keep them fresh than to point out how patently absurd they actually are? But when it comes to horror movie monsters being played for laughs the zombie always comes out on top. Even in George Romero’s classic Dead series, the zombies — while never less of a threat — are often regarded with a sense of humor because they’re creatures without any real personality and anything resembling a brain who act primarily out of instinct, kind of like petulant toddlers. As a result, they do goofy things like get caught on escalators, play with guns, and stand idly by while the living throw cream pies in their faces. Zombies are fun, but still scary. After all, you may find their dead-eyed antics amusing, but would you want to be one of them? I doubt it.

However, killing zombies still sounds like a lot of fun. If you have an IQ greater than your shoe size then you have the advantage over the walking dead. How many of us, after devouring every zombie flick we can get our hands on (even the shittier ones), have dug deep into the bowels of our horror-soaked imaginations and wondered how we would act in the face of a global zombie apocalypse? We’ve watched every movie George Romero movie and at least two to three of the Return of the Living Dead flicks (the first two to three preferably) and read the works of Max Brooks cover-to-cover, so we all have daydreamed about our own possible survival scenarios in a world conquered by the shambling dead. What will we do when the majority of the planet’s population has either been turned into zombies or become food for the undead? Load up some shotguns, raid the local 7-11 for booze and beef jerky, and then hit the Hummer dealership, that’s what! [...]

9
Directed by Shane Acker
Starring Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau
Studio: Focus Features
Release date: 9/9/09 (clever right?)

I’m a big fan of animation in all its forms, but I’m also an adult, and I want a good story to go along with what I’m watching. That’s what I was hoping for when I first started seeing previews for the film 9. It looked like more of an adult action film, which just happened to be done with CG animation. Add in the names Tim Burton, whose done great animation work before with the Nightmare Before Christmas and the Corpse Bride, and Timur Bekmambetov, who directed Wanted as well as two very visually experimental movies in Night Watch and Day Watch, and you’ve made a movie that I’ll want to see. See is the operative word when it comes to 9, because while it is spectacular looking, the rest of my mind could never get into the film.

The story is fairly simple. A creature made out of cloth (voiced by Elijah Wood) wakes up in a strange room, with a mysterious round object. (I’d accuse the filmmakers of ripping off LittleBigPlanet’s Sack-boy if I didn’t know that the short film this is based on hadn’t come out well before the game.) He can’t speak and doesn’t know anything about what’s going on, so he ventures out until he runs across another cloth man, who says his name is 2 (Martin Landau), and sees that the new one has a 9 on his back, so that’s what he calls him. 2 is also nice enough to hook 9 up with a voice box so he can speak. Shortly after, 2 is captured by some kind of monster and taken away. 9 is determined to rescue him and sets off to the factory where he saw 2 was taken. Along the way he meets a number of creatures just like him (voiced by John C. Reilly, Christopher Plummer, Jennifer Connelly, and Crispin Glover), and then he ends up almost dooming what remains of life. Then the creatures run around, learning where they come from, why they were created, and how they can save whatever life remains on the Earth [...]

Halloween II
Directed by Rob Zombie
Starring Tyler Mane, Brad Dourif, Chris Hardwick, Mark Christopher-Lawrence, Jeffrey Daniel Phillips
Rated R
Released date: August 28, 2009

A few years ago the Halloween franchise was in dire need of a change in direction worse than anything. The logical step from a Hollywood studio standpoint was to take the series’ iconic masked madman Michael Myers back to his roots and start anew. The idea of a remake of the original Halloween wasn’t warmly accepted at first among the franchise’s longtime fans with good reason but the series had long since scraped the bottom of the barrel so clean you could eat off it. The time had come for a new director to take the reins of Michael Myers’ gory exploits and put their own unique spin on the beloved horror series. Musician and filmmaker Rob Zombie was an odd choice for that job and the movie he ultimately delivered in the late summer of 2007 was greeted with the kind of warm enthusiasm Michael Myers usually reserved for his murder victims. I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve seen the remake several times and I even own it on DVD. It’s not a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination but I regard it as a fascinating failure possessing greater re-watch value than 95% of the horror remakes being released these days.

Zombie did the best job he could when you consider the circumstances but the slow-burning narrative of his remake’s first two acts was crippled in the third act by the crude insertion of a compact rehash of the original that gave us no time to really get to know the other characters. Even the character of Laurie Strode, one of horror cinema’s greatest heroines, was reduced to a giggly, perky cipher I had little or no sympathy for. Zombie was heavily criticized for attempting to give Michael Myers a detailed origin complete with a broken home, a family who couldn’t give much of a shit about him (with the exception of dear ol’ mum Deborah, a fine performance by the underrated Sheri Moon Zombie, the director’s missus), and a society that has written him off before they even knew him [...]

Inglourious Basterds
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Starring Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Melanie Laurent, Diane Kruger, Daniel Bruhl, Eli Roth, Michael Fassbenderr, Til Schweiger, Samm Levine, B.J. Novak, Mike Myers
Rated R
Release date: August 21, 2009

I did not discover Quentin Tarantino at the same time everyone else did, but by the time his 1997 crime drama Jackie Brown, an adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s novel Rum Punch, was released I knew who he was. I came by his movies on my own with my only knowledge of them being what I had read in magazines like Rolling Stone, Premiere, and Entertainment Weekly.

Pulp Fiction, his epic anthology of strangely believable adventures in the underworld, was the first. I rented that movie when it was first released on video but it took me all of the one-week rental period to watch it because I could not view it in the presence of my younger brother and sister. But as I watched Pulp Fiction, piece by piece every day before and after I went to school, I became captivated by what I was seeing and I began to understand why Quentin Tarantino was the talk of the town. Here was undoubtedly the most innovative and dynamic new filmmaker to emerge in a decade that had seen more than its fair share of cinematic underachievers and would see even more before the millennium came to a close. Tarantino’s films were heavily criticized for their violence but when weighed against the majority of the R-rated action fare that was coming out of Hollywood there was not much bloodshed at all. What gave the violence in Tarantino’s films its impact was its relative restraint. His films rely mostly on the integral developments of plot and character. When the violence does come, be it in a shocking gag (the accidental shooting of Marvin in Pulp Fiction) or an extended battle sequence (the House of Blue Leaves fight which takes up the majority of Kill Bill Volume 1’s third act), it feels like a cathartic release of tension and energy. Tarantino’s own personal celluloid orgasm, if you will [...]