Movie Review: Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Brian Wright

Harbinger of 2012 October? ___ 10/10
Review by Brian Wright

Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Written by Stanley Kubrick

The subtitle for Dr. Strangelove is ‘How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.’ The form of which I find comes in handy for any number of acts of state excess: e.g. “how I learned to stop worrying and love drone surveillance,” “how I learned to stop worrying and love my RFID biochip,” “how I learned to stop worrying and love my FEMA internment camp”… you get the picture. In the 1950s and 1960s the threat of ‘nukuler war toe to toe with the Rooskies’ was a constant anxiety among all segments of American society, and no doubt other countries in the line of fire. It sure the hell scared the hell out of me. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Trial and Error (1997)

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Brian Wright

Daniels and Richards primo comic duo ___ 7/10
Review by Brian Wright

Written by Sara Bernstein
Directed by Jonathan Lynn

Richard Rietti: Maybe he’s the person that he conned the most. I mean we all do that, you know. We all keep a little bit of ourselves hidden. Cuz if we didn’t, well, then we’d have to look at who we are. Who we really are. And if we didn’t like it, well, we’d have nobody to blame but ourselves.

Take a break and return to the late 90s for a unique Hollywood offering that few people were aware of at the time, whether from poor marketing or simple inattention. Trial and Error takes the established screen actor at the time, Jeff Daniels (Gettysburg, Fly Away Home), and combines the kinetic TV presence, Kramer (Michael Richards), from Seinfield to accomplish an extremely funny and worthy satire suggesting the Biblical adage, “What shall it profit a man to win the whole world yet lose his own soul?” Continue reading →

Movie Review: Hereafter (2010)

Posted on March 18, 2012 by Brian Wright

Humanitarian exploration of afterlife ___ 9/10
Review by Brian Wright

Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by Peter Morgan

On the surface, Hereafter is a fairly straightforward story of two individuals—George Lonegan (Matt Damon) and Marie LeLay (Cécile De France)—who have near-death experiences that result in special understanding that seemingly drives them toward each other across the continents. But their internal struggles with having a unique ability to ‘see in the world of the dead,’ the characters with whom they pass through their lives, and strangers who are drawn to them—particularly to Lonegan, who has reluctantly spent some time in the psychic market—make the film a complex tapestry of, usually benign, behavior.

Continue reading →

Movie Review: Midnight in Paris (2011)

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Brian Wright

Woody Allen’s crowning achievement ___ 10/10
Review by Brian Wright

Directed by Woody Allen
Written by Woody Allen

Adriana: I can never decide whether Paris is more beautiful by day or by night.
Gil: No, you can’t, you couldn’t pick one. I mean I can give you a checkmate argument for each side. You know, I sometimes think, how is anyone ever gonna come up with a book, or a painting, or a symphony, or a sculpture that can compete with a great city. You can’t. Because you look around and every street, every boulevard, is its own special art form and when you think that in the cold, violent, meaningless universe that Paris exists, these lights, I mean come on, there’s nothing happening on Jupiter or Neptune, but from way out in space you can see these lights, the cafés, people drinking and singing. For all we know, Paris is the hottest spot in the universe. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Forks over Knives (2011)

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Brian Wright

Now, THIS is a revolution ___ 9/10

Directed by Lee Fulkerson
Written by Lee Fulkerson

You are what you eat. That’s the important lesson of this game-changing film, a documentary that doubles as a quiet heroic story of struggle and victory. Victory of the truth over decades, even centuries, of lies and misconceptions about the food we consume. In a nutshell the argument of Forks over Knives—the title is intended to suggest the conquest of the ‘knives’ of surgery by the ‘forks’ of eating the right foods—is that changing from an animal-based diet to a whole-foods, plant-based diet will not only make you dramatically healthier, it will prevent and even cure disease… the big ones: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer—most of the time, and within a matter of weeks. Continue reading →

Movie Review: The Apartment (1960)

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Brian Wright

Laughs and love in the age of Mad Men ___ 9/10
Review by Brian Wright

Written by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond
Directed by Billy Wilder

[first lines]
C.C. Baxter: [narrating] On November 1st, 1959, the population of New York City was 8,042,783. If you laid all these people end to end, figuring an average height of five feet six and a half inches, they would reach from Times Square to the outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan. I know facts like this because I work for an insurance company – Consolidated Life of New York. We’re one of the top five companies in the country. Our home office has 31,259 employees, which is more than the entire population of uhh… Natchez, Mississippi. I work on the 19th floor. Ordinary Policy Department, Premium Accounting Division, Section W, desk number 861. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Smallville ‘Relic’

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Brian Wright

Magical episode in young-Superman series _ 9/10
Review by Brian Wright

Lana: She knew what it felt like to really be in love.
Clark: It’s too bad it couldn’t last.
Lana: But what if that’s not the point. Maybe you have to be grateful for the time that you have together, stop holding on to what could’ve been.

You have to be kidding. Smallville?! Just a comic book treatment of the comic book hero, Superman, right? Not. I’d heard of the Warner Brothers Smallville series, but paid scant attention. Having grown up in the 1950s as an avid follower of the Superman television series starring George Reeves (also reading several of the Superman comic books[1], which had a life of their own since their origin in 1938), I welcomed the first movie Superman in 1978. I’m still a young man (29) then, and though wary of the overcommercialization of one of my childhood heroes, I feel Christopher Reeve and company gave the first Superman a wonderful presence. Continue reading →