Change Your Image
charles_hardin_holley
Reviews
Lucy (2014)
Irresistible
It's one of those movies I can't stop watching once I start. Despite its many flaws, it's captivating. Morgan Freeman appears lost throughout, but Scarlett is terrific. She and Besson seem to have been on the same wavelength.
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
I'm a BIG Scorsese fan, but...
There have been big Scorsese productions that I wasn't particularly fond of, like Gangs of New York and The Age of Innocence, but this is a first: a Scorsese picture I actually disliked. Nothing can change the fact that Martin Scorsese is one of the great American film auteurs. His body of work is virtually unparalleled. But this picture is a big misstep for the great director. It is a failed satire, if indeed it was meant to be a satire. It's overlong, overwrought, and ultimately boring. He means to show us something about wretched excess, I suppose, but he fails to create a single character about whom we might give a damn, except for the antagonist, and in the end all you can do is yawn and be happy it's over.
Django Unchained (2012)
another Tarantino revenge fantasy - boring!
Well, if that's your cup of poison, be my guest. Waltz is good, appealing even. He's certainly the most watchable actor in the movie. DiCaprio is better than expected, in a truly horrible role. A lesser actor would have made Massa Candie a clown.
But the picture's a mess. I really think if a cartoon festival of gore is to your liking, you'd do better to watch Kill Bill again and skip this one. At least that picture had some narrative drive, and a heroine you could root for, and terrific choreography to recommend it. Even the bad guys in Kill Bill were entertaining. Django Unchained has none of that. It's not just another revenge fantasy - it's a *degenerate* revenge fantasy. It's like somebody doing bad Tarantino.
Cops (1922)
Buster's finest short
Cops is perhaps Buster's best short. It's my favorite, at any rate, and that's saying something, because as great as many of his features from the 20s were, his two-reelers were probably his best work. In them he perfected the least sentimental of his personas: an opportunistic, somewhat roguish chap, who doesn't mind getting into a scrape over a girl or a bit of a scam, but who usually manages to get out of it with his wit, athleticism and charm.
Keaton invented so much of cinema as we know it today, and rarely gets credit for it, so you really should seek out and watch as much of his pictures from the 1920s as you can.