★★★★ “The reprimand, if there is to be one, must come from your own conscience.” William Friedkin’s swan song is the year’s greatest film. Cretins will dismiss its sentiments as mere boomer talk, but years from now it will endure for what it is – a mic drop from one of America’s greatest cinematic provocateurs […]
★★★★ “One of these days, it’s just gonna be like…” *cocks machine gun I never liked The Office – mainly because I never found it to be as consistently funny as Office Space. The target is generally the same, but Mike Judge did in an hour and a half what that show couldn’t do in […]
★★★★ Schindler’s List should be remembered for more than just being a Holocaust movie. It takes more than simply depicting a violent historical subject to make a film as magnificent as Schindler’s List is. Steven Spielberg may have been personally drawn to the subject, but the story he actually told with his 1993 black & […]
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This article was originally published on the Cinematic Katzenjammer in March, 2019. ★★★★ “Consequences,” a character says to another. “Consequences,” the second character replies. John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum feels like one gigantic set of consequences for the series, in spite of the fact that very little of it is truly explained. […]
★★★★ “Cease quoting laws to those of us with swords.” – Pompey Magnus — “I know those law books mean a lot to you, but not out here. Out here, a man settles his own problems.” – Tom Doniphon (John Wayne) Sixty years ago, perhaps the greatest western of all time released to theaters all […]
★★★★ “We don’t make good citizens, but we make good prisoners.” – The Warden Welcome to the end of the Ten for Ten. The end of the experimental decade in cinema, the end of Clint Eastwood’s serial acting collaboration with any director (from this moment onwards, he has acted in fewer than ten films that […]
★★★★ “But perhaps, as your father used to say: ‘A taut hand at sea is better than a slack one.’“ What does it mean to create a civilization? Is it possible that something as lawless as a mutiny can bring about one of the greatest advances in law, order, and institutional structure in history? Mutiny […]
★★★★ “If the Secretary wanted me out of there, it must be pretty bad out here.” – Ethan Hunt As a rule, the longer a franchise runs, the more stale it gets, and the easier it is to spot the moment where it peaked. Even with exceptions, the rule remains. Harry Potter peaked with the […]
★★★★ Let’s talk about racism. I’ve held for years that the most racist regular moviegoing audience isn’t actually anyone in the good ol’ You-Ess of A. It’s China. The joke of it is that just about everyone knows that as well as I do, but that Americans, and elites in particular, don’t know what to […]
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This article was originally published on the Cinematic Katzenjammer in March, 2019. ★★★★ You know what movies could benefit from more of these days? Violence. Not the kind where human beings are made of water balloons and discharge blood like fire hoses – the kind that’s disturbing, unnerving, difficult to witness and decidedly […]
★★★★ “Dear Madam, I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement . . . that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from […]
V for Verbatim 