Author Archive
Film Review – The Armstrong Lie
Lance Armstrong is a big fat lying liar. No debate there. But he’s a liar in a sport where everybody cheats and everybody lies about it, so who really cares? Quite a lot of people, actually. For some reason, bicycle racing fans have been able…
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Film Review – Kill Your Darlings
John Krokidas’s new film, Kill Your Darlings, uses the murder of professor-turned-janitor David Kammerer (Michael C. Hall) to show how the Beat poets first came together. (This film is based on a “true story.” Which is all good and fine, but the spin on some…
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Film Review – Dallas Buyers Club
There is a formula for the disease-of-the-week movies I used to watch back in the ’90s: Flawed hero/heroine (usually heroine because this movie genre is a staple of the Lifetime channel) discovers he or she has contracted a terminal illness and has a short time…
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Double Feature Showdown – The Wasp Woman Vs. The Leech Woman
It’s October, so all I want to watch is horror films. I’m down with a lot of the newer stuff, but my true passion lies in the B productions from the thirties, forties, and fifties. There’s a lot of good stuff hidden behind some bad…
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SIFF Film Review – Inequality For All
Every year, I make a list of films I would like to review at the Seattle International Film Festival, and this year I was particularly interested to see Inequality for All, Jacob Kornbluth’s documentary about economist Robert Reich and the problems he sees with our…
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Film Review – Mademoiselle C
A good fashion documentary will juxtapose the silliness of the fashion world against the art of beautiful clothing and end up with something both interesting and compelling. It’s sometimes hard to take the denizens of high fashion seriously, what with the emphasis on appearances and…
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Film Review – Adore
There’s a certain type of book and movie I think of as middle-aged male wish fulfillment: an older man seduces and educates a younger woman, introducing her to the ways of love while feeding his own creative drive and sexual needs. It’s a literary fiction…
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Film Review – Austenland
I’m just going to get straight to the point: Austenland is really funny and you should go see it. I had some worries beforehand, but about 30 seconds in, I realized I was entering a place I really wanted to be. Let me continue by…
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