Most of the time when I’m going to sit down to watch a movie I have a general sense of what the movie is going to be about and what kind of mood it’s going to leave me in. Not that I cheat and look up what a movie is about before I see it but generally I’ve seen the film’s trailer somewhere or heard about it through a recommendation that gave me an impression of what to expect. Today’s Subtitle Subversive post is about a film which has been on my radar for a while that still managed to…
Category: Film Follies
How Have You Not Seen That? The Matrix
There are films that come along that are great films. There are films that come along that are important films. And then there are films that come along that are cultural happenings. Films that refuse to be held by the constraints of your local cinema and bust out to dominate the cultural landscape to such a degree that their impact can still be felt decades later. These are the kinds of films I try to cover in How Have You Not Seen That? and today’s selection certainly fits the bill. So let’s take a trip down the existential rabbit hole…
Worth it? – The Equalizer
“What is the point of opening a generic, action-driven, male-revenge fantasy film with a quote from Mark Twain?” –The Eclectic Eccentric Unless of course, you intended for every reviewer to give you one strike right off the bat. Maybe the director likes living on the wild side or maybe he just takes himself and his work way too seriously. I suppose that’s just one of the many questions I’ll have to answer today as I decide if The Equalizer starring Denzel Washington is Worth It? Let’s get one thing out of the way from the get-go, this movie features one…
Subtitle Subversive- El ángel exterminador
Some films are straightforward. They have a plot, characters, scenery, and operate under a basic premise that what you see is what you get. Some films are not at all straightforward and require multiple viewing and an extensive amount of thinking after the fact to discern and interpret their true meanings or if the film had any meaning at all. Luis Buñuel’s El ángel exterminador certainly falls into the latter category. A surrealist indictment of Franco’s Spain, the movie is a masterclass of satire and a high watermark of Spanish cinema. Which is why I’ve made it the subject of…
Subtitle Subversive-The Time That Remains
It is not my habit to politicize the Film Follies section of this blog, I leave that to my Discourse of the Day posts, but some films are by their nature political and it would be irresponsible of me to pretend otherwise. This has been a bad year for Israeli-Palestinian relations, as most years are. Given the renewed tensions following Donald Trump’s reckless relocation of the American Embassy to Jerusalem I felt it was time to finally sit down and watch a movie that has been on my list since it came out almost ten years ago. In this edition…
Worth It?- Burnt
I have a confession to make. I heart Bradley Cooper. Like really heart him. It’s as if his charm reaches out and chokes me until I succumb to a dark slumber filled with dreams of winning smiles and brash one-liners. The man once made a movie about a gun-wielding raccoon an international blockbuster okay? There is no denying his allure. And when I first saw the trailer for Burnt I was genuinely excited to see charmingly brash Bradley Cooper play a recovering addict chef trying to put his life back together. A great casting choice coupled with what looked to…
How have you not seen that- Ghostbusters
Who you gonna call? If you know the answer to that question then feel free to move on from this particular post. But if you didn’t instinctively shout out the title of a particular nineteen eighty-four horror comedy film and startle those around you then you should know what my follow up question is going to be. That’s right its time for another edition of How Have You Not Seen That? Today we’re going to talk about the iconic comedy Ghostbusters because I ain’t afraid of no ghosts. To begin with, Ghostbusters puts together one of the greatest comedy casts…
Worth It?-John Wick
Let me start by telling you that John Wick is a testosterone-infused masturbatory male fantasy on cocaine and that its plot makes very little sense. Let me also tell you that it is an hour and forty minutes of unadulterated fun and I will not apologize for enjoying it. I know, I know I’m getting ahead of myself. This is Worth It? after all. I’m supposed to hem and haw and give you things that I liked and didn’t like before stunning you with a recommendation to see or not see a film. But that would require me to craft…
Character Study-Harry Callahan
Every once and awhile a film will come along that will so embed itself in pop culture that a person need never have seen a film to quote it. Dirty Harry is one of these films. It and its subsequent sequels proved to be so impactful that we use phrases such as “Do you feel lucky?” and “Make my day” as part of our everyday conversation. Even Dirty Harry itself has become a slang term in our lexicon. All of that is due to Clint Eastwood’s portrayal of the titular Dirty Harry, and in this edition of Character Study, we’re…
Worth it?- The Intern
In this edition of Worth It? I take a look at a quiet comedy called The Intern starring Robert De Niro and Ann Hathaway. The story follows 70-year-old widower De Niro as he goes to work as a “senior” intern for Hathaway’s incredibly successful internet startup which is beginning to feel growing pains. The through-line of the story revolves around whether or not Hathaway should bring in an outside CEO to help her run her company. Robert De Niro has hit that point in his career where he can take on all those quirky old man roles that don’t really…