May 26, 2010: MacGruber It’s no accident that I re-watched Tommy Boy (1995) early one evening, and then went out later to the theatre to see MacGruber. Tommy Boy is a comedy from an almost sentimental bygone era even though it’s only 15 years ago, as these days gross-out humour, extreme action violence, and inventive […]
May 26, 2010: Tommy Boy What is there to say about Tommy Boy that anyone who cares hasn’t already said? Having seen this in the theatre upon its initial release in 1995 and having been of the appropriate target demographic (20-something male), my perspective on the film is of course terribly biased, even more so […]
May 25, 2010: I.O.U.S.A. When asking typical Americans on the street if they know the US national debt, some of them guess in the millions, and even the high guesses are still less than $100 billion. This is not a good sign. The US national debt is now over $10 trillion. I.O.U.S.A. examines how and […]
May 24, 2010: Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders This lightweight documentary about how cheap credit has led to the typical American being too heavily leveraged (i.e. in debt), is a fascinating window into a recent but completely vanished era. Released in 2006, just before the oil price spike […]
May 21, 2010: Rumble Fish My typical review, in cases in which I have read a book before seeing the movie, tends to conclude that the movie doesn’t measure up and is a pale reflection of the book. This one is no different. The keen Half-Assed Movie Reviews reader may note that I haven’t often […]
May 18, 2010: Save the Tiger It’s been months since I skipped back into the 1970s for a reminder of how unique the filmmaking from that decade was. Being a bit of an Oscar hound, Save the Tiger (1973) has been on my list for a long time since it’s the only film for which […]
May 16, 2010: Iron Man 2 How is it that I never read comic books as a kid, still don’t read comic books now, and have generally not liked the adaptations related to anything other than the really big characters (Superman, Batman), yet I continue to get sucked into the Iron Man series despite some […]
May 14, 2010: Saw VI I’ve been a long-time proponent of the Saw series, largely because of the groundbreaking complexity of the themes explored in the first film. That examination of voyeurism and the value of life and people’s limits quite reasonably spawned a sequel to delve deeper into the motivations of the main villain, […]
May 7, 2010: Human Terrain The last of the Hot Docs documentaries for me this year, Human Terrain tells the story of a US military strategy in recent years to train their soldiers in cultural awareness, since those in the middle east are operating overseas in territory populated by people whose customs are unfamiliar to […]
May 7, 2010: 1000 Voices 1000 Voices is a short film which briefly examines the plight of detainees in UK prisons in the post-9/11 world. With no limit on their detention time, these people, suspected terrorists for whatever reason, are put aside and forgotten until it’s convenient to deal with them, which might be never. […]