Die Hard in the White House

Last updated on: March 21, 2013 at 8:30 am By Coyle Neal

Review of Olympus Has Fallen, Directed by Antoine Fuqua Fortunately, the title of this review pretty much provides the summary of the movie [spoiler alerts from here on]. “Terrorists” have taken over the White House and are making insane demands while working on their own secret agenda. The entire government apparatus repeatedly fails to take control of the situation (despite being much more competent than the counterpart “FBI guys” of Die Hard). The only hope of the hostages—including the President... Read more

House of Cards: Collapse is Inevitable

Last updated on: March 20, 2013 at 6:12 am By Kendrick Kuo

Review of House of Cards (Season 1), Directed by David Finch Rating: 9/10 If you take The West Wing, strip it of its fluffy idealism, make it dark and pessimistic, mix in contemporary gadgets (iPads, texting), keep the occasional Bartlet monologue but make it lessons in Machiavellian strategy, you get something like House of Cards. Francis “Frank” Underwood (Kevin Spacey), a Democratic Congressman from South Carolina, is the House Majority Whip and, as the first season opens, is passed over... Read more

The Music of the Last of the Mohicans

Last updated on: March 19, 2013 at 6:32 am By Paul D. Miller

Review of The Last of the Mohicans, Directed by Michael Mann When I was in high school The Last of the Mohicans (1992) made a profound impression on me. Rewatching it two decades later, I think it was all about the music. The 1992 film that I saw turns out to be a remake of an adaptation of a novel published in 1826 by James Fenimore Cooper. There have been at least eight screen versions of the book, with the... Read more

Beyond the Hills Joins the List of Great Spiritual Dramas

Last updated on: March 18, 2013 at 6:24 am By Christian Hamaker

Review of Beyond the Hills, Directed by Christian Mungiu Here’s the bottom line on Beyond the Hills, the new film from Romania’s Christian Mungiu: It’s one of the best religious dramas in recent memory, on par with the great spiritual dramas from Ingmar Bergman in his prime (The Seventh Seal, The Virgin Spring, The Silence). But like those Bergman films, Beyond the Hills is not designed to comfort. Based on a true story of an exorcism gone wrong, the film is,... Read more

Burt Wonderstone: From Wonder-Empty to Wonder-Full

Last updated on: March 15, 2013 at 6:37 am By Alexis Neal

Review of The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, Directed by Don Scardino Yet this I hold against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. ~ Revelation 2:4 Albert Weinzelstein and his friend Anthony—social outcasts and frequent targets for bullying—wanted nothing more than to explore the wonderful world of magic; a world personified by Rance Holloway (Alan Arkin), a stage magician who looks like a live-action Count von Count … if he were a lounge singer. The boys assiduously study and... Read more

Stoker and the Shadow of Alfred Hitchcock

Last updated on: March 15, 2013 at 6:26 am By Christian Hamaker

A Review of Stoker, Directed by Park Chan-wook “Shadow of a Doubt” seems a particularly American film, although it is part of a tradition that starts with Dante, culminates with Dostoevsky (whom Hitchcock has called a “master”) and includes in it as well the best writings of Henry James and Graham Greene. … But the clearest parallel lies with that authentically American Puritan view of man and his world as flawed, weak and susceptible to corruption and madness. … It... Read more

Stoker’s Identity and Inheritance

Last updated on: March 15, 2013 at 6:25 am By Kendrick Kuo

Review of Stoker, Directed by Park Chan-wook (WARNING: This review contains mature content of a sexual nature. Reader discretion advised. Spoilers are also included.) How much of our lives is determined by our heritage? What does it mean to be an adult? These kinds of questions form the undercurrent in Stoker, the newest film by South Korean director Park Chan-wook. Park leaves us with a paradoxical answer: we cannot escape the sins of our family yet the essence of being... Read more

The Call: Trouble on the Line

Last updated on: March 15, 2013 at 6:15 am By Coyle Neal

Review of The Call directed by Brad Anderson Jordan Turner (Halle Berry) works in “the Hive”—a 911 call center in California. When she receives a call from a girl being abducted, Jordan does her job efficiently and well, dispatching the first-responders and assuring the girl that help is on the way. Unfortunately, help does not get there in time and the girl is murdered. Despite the reassurances of her friends and coworkers that she did everything right and that she... Read more

Chasing the Orgastic Future with Jay Gatsby

Last updated on: November 29, 2023 at 12:36 pm By Paul D. Miller

Review of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald The first time I read The Great Gatsby, I was high on codeine—recovering from surgery—and had vivid hallucinatory dreams of the green light every night for a week. Almost twenty years later, the trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s forthcoming screen adaptation is making the rounds, and I see that Luhrmann was also on drugs while making the film. Somehow this seems appropriate. The Great Gatsby (1925) did not win the Pulitzer Prize or... Read more

The Romance of the Noble Savage: The Deerslayer

Last updated on: March 13, 2013 at 6:03 am By Paul D. Miller

Review of The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper Five white people are holed up in a floating cabin in the middle of a lake and surrounded on all sides by woods infested with hostile Huron Indians bent on murder, rape, and pillage. A tense game of cat and mouse ensues as intricate as chess: maneuvering for advantage, night raids on campsites, kidnappings, negotiations, ransom, and, yes, scalping. This is The Deerslayer (1841), a classic of 19th Century American literature. Despite its... Read more