PUSH – BASED ON THE SHORT STORY BUTTON, BUTTON BY RICHARD MATHESON
Late in THE BOX somebody asks, “Can I be forgiven?” The character is talking about a lapse in moral judgment that caused harm to others. But you kind of hope it’s also writer/director Richard Kelly talking about his last two movies, SOUTHLAND TALES and DOMINO. Both are more like drugged out brainstorming sessions than actual finished movies – a couple funny ideas wrapped in a thousand, uh… other ideas, then chewed up and spit onto the screen with no second thought given to concepts like planning, timing, restraint, coherence or entertainment value. To me those are two of the most tedious, headscratchingly ill-conceived disasters of modern film, and the motherfucker did them in a row. With only one pretty good movie under his belt to hang his hat on*.
No. Not if this is an era of accountability. You can’t be forgiven.
So it’s in the spirit of forgiveness and Christian redemption that I say I thought THE BOX was pretty good. His best, for what that’s worth. (read the rest of this shit…)
Speaking of small time horror remakes, the STEPFATHER one came out on DVD a week or two ago. This is another one where it’s not really a big name for the teens to have heard of like NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET or something, so it’s kind of weird that they bothered. But the source material is an underrated movie with a good, simple premise, so that’s attractive. I think the original’s script by Donald Westlake is real good, but it’s definitely elevated by a great performance by Terry O’Quinn. And that guy’s apparently on the popular television program LOST, so you’d think they’d just push the original on the kids and not bother with a new one. You’d think that – but the old one doesn’t have text messaging in it. The new one does. Also, internet research instead of going to the library. It’s a whole new ball game. 
Sometimes when we talk about all these horror remakes it seems kind of senseless, you can’t even tell what they’re thinking when they pick which movies to remake. But the reasoning behind this one is clear: 
I get alot of nice emails from people pointing me to the big stories I should know about, announcements of new movies that they know I would be excited about and things like that. I appreciate you guys looking out for me but also I figured I should mention some of the big ones to save you guys the trouble of making sure I know about them…
SHUTTER ISLAND is alot like JURASSIC PARK. Outside experts are called in to a remote island where some unusual shit goes down. They’re shown the operation, the security setup, the layout. Then there’s a big ass storm so they can’t get off the island, the electric fences go down and the captives get loose and it’s bedlam. But it’s the criminally insane instead of dinosaurs, and it’s the guy who plays GANDHI instead of the director of GANDHI who’s their guide on the island. There are other minor differences, like for example this one is less about people staring in awe at dinosaurs and more about piecing together the traumatic events that haunt the hero, and figuring out how they tie into this mystery which unfolds in a surreal horror movie atmosphere and within the context of the 1950s, with the lingering horrors of WWII still in people’s minds as well as the fear of the hydrogen bomb and of communism, and most importantly during the psychiatric community’s bumpy transition from barbaric surgical methods to more modern psychotropic drugs and verbal forms of therapy. Otherwise though it’s pretty much the exact same movie, a blatant ripoff. 
I don’t know what my problem was, but I didn’t dig on GLADIATOR like everybody else did, and for some reason I was bitter about it and skipped most of the Ridley Scott movies after that. But like the typical SCARFACE-loving American male I couldn’t resist AMERICAN GANGSTER, and that’s when I realized the error of my ways. So predictably my post BAD LIEUTENANT fascination with Nic Cage sent me back to catch up on Mr. Scott’s con men movie.
I never heard of Lee Daniels before he got a best director nomination for PRECIOUS, BASED ON etc. Turns out PRECIOUS… is his third movie as a director, SHADOWBOXER is his first, and Kent M. Beeson insisted in the comments that I had to see it.
’90s studio action thriller – I’d like you to meet my friend SAW.
Man, this movie made me feel naive. It’s a documentary about black women’s hair, and it’s not really made for a white audience, it seems mainly designed to inspire discussion about beauty standards among the black community. But it was also fascinating for a white dude like me, and maybe more surprising. I had no idea. I never really thought about some of this stuff.
Here in the U.S. Sunday was Valentine’s Day, yesterday was President’s Day, and today is BLACK DYNAMITE Day. If you didn’t catch it at a random film festival or in its limited theatrical release (or even if you did) today is the day when you can finally buy or rent it on DVD or Blu-Ray.
