Author Archive
Film Analysis – The Sexual Awakening of George McFly
On the cinematic date of October 21, 2015, Back to the Future II has Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) arrive in his hometown of Hill Valley thirty years from where the original film left off in order to help his kids. With all the attention…
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Film Analysis – Land of Wolves (2015)
When I was seventeen, I traveled to Mazatlan, Mexico, for spring break in March of 1998. This wasn’t a quick plane ride with two hundred hormonal college kids to a weeklong boozefest on the beach; rather, I went with a friend and her boyfriend, two…
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Film Review – Finders Keepers
Who would have thought the story of two men fighting over ownership of an amputated leg found in a smoker grill in North Carolina would attain a near-Steinbeck level of self-destruction and resurrection? At first glance, Finders Keepers is a parody of two hicks from…
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Audacious Dames – Pam Grier – Jackie Brown (1997)
For all of Quentin Tarantino’s female characters, there are none that his camera insists we love and champion more than 1997’s Jackie Brown, played by Pam Grier. The film is a tightly focused homage to Grier and her career as an action heroine with all the…
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Film Review – Everest
Everest is three-fourths guide through the unrelenting onslaught of nature and one-fourth regretting the tour. For all its breathtaking footage of the mountain in all its caprice and grandeur, you can’t shake the feeling that the thrill-seekers who traverse its walls and crags have paid…
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Film Review – Phoenix
After seeing Phoenix, I always think of the film as being in black and white (it is not), with only little details in color: the red dress, a shade of lipstick, the husband’s eyes. Comparisons to Vertigo aside, the film is more of a companion…
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Film Review – Mistress America
Mistress America is about beginnings and faith and the people willing to try, no matter how fruitless a quest seems. After age thirty, women are programmed abandon such quests – one of our main characters here is thirty. We peer into this woman’s world through…
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Audacious Dames – Susan Sarandon – Thelma & Louise
Thelma & Louise, both the film and its titular characters, were jinxed at the Oscars in 1992, winning only one well-deserved award for Best Writing for a Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen by Callie Khouri. Its parched vistas, greasy spoons, and asphalt veins of…
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