HAYWIRE
Note: above is not taken from the film. The search for images stopped here. The Satanic obsidian eyes of Gina Carano are like twin voids reflecting only the tiniest glimmers of light, revealing nothing within but somehow peering back into us like a Nietzchean abyss. Shes indistinguishable from the character she portrays in Steven Soderberghs Haywire, which is an unusual hybrid of his experimental films featuring non-actors (such as Bubble and The Girlfriend Experience) and his star-studded mainstream blockbusters. Here, the guise of a duplicity-wrought espionage yarn riddled with requisite double-crosses and globetrotting is used to examine gender roles in ...
RED TAILS
"Take that, foolish African!" - Line from the film or Lucas to his new audience? During the Second World War, 450 black men were sent into aerial combat, running more than 200 bomber escort missions, and during Red Tails, we feel as though we have seen all 200 in real-time. George Lucas is executive producer, and he has announced that this is his last (except not really) popcorn film. Apparently, it attracted so little interest that Twentieth Century Fox distributed only if Lucas paid for everything. If he were working a corner, that's like paying the clients for the right to call ...
SAVAGE INTRUDER
It is difficult to tell whether Donald Wolfes lysergic Savage Intruder is trying to say something meaningful about the surreal culture of the Los Angeles film industry, or whether its merely exploiting old Hollywood washouts, has-beens, and never-weres. Perhaps in its own cynical way its expressing deeper truths that it could never hope to approach were one to take the film at face value; its a derivative ripoff of Psycho through and through, down to its primal Freudian tropes and triumph of its nebbish male antagonist over the ineffectual forces of Good, but Wolfes stunt casting proves to be his ...
PARADISE LOST 3: PURGATORY
Satanic Panic - a phenomenon characterized by widespread fear about the presence of satanic ritual abuse in one's community, state or country. Bullshit - trivial, insincere, untruthful talk, writing, or nonsense made by people more concerned with the response of the audience than in truth and accuracy. During the 1980s and early 90s, God-fearing Americans were in the grip of a moral panic brought about by charlatans peddling the unfounded dangers of subliminal messages in rock and roll and satanic ritual abuse. Across the country, millions of records and stereo systems were destroyed in an attempt to play Stairway to Heaven backwards ...
DEEP SPACE NINE: PART 1, SISKO, MADNESS AND THE FERENGI
In case you're pretending to not be a nerd, DS9 stands for "draw out the opening credits as long as possible so we can save nine minutes worth of show production costs per episode." What, are Trek fans going to complain about something being ponderous and dull? Yes. The show is set aboard a space station that is also named Deep Space Nine. The station is partially a Benthamian hellhole, modeled on the utilitarian's insane plans for building "panopticon" prisons because of his belief that the greatest possible aggregate utility would occur if he could stand in one place and ...
HAYWIRE
Don’t strangle me to death with your thighs, or torture me by sitting on my face. Anything but that.
SAVAGE INTRUDER
As Hollywood grinds down its stars, this movie chips away at your sanity.
PARADISE LOST 3: PURGATORY
This is why innocence must be assumed unless there is damn good reason to the contrary.
DEEP SPACE NINE: PART 1, SISKO, MADNESS AND THE FERENGI
But Aquaman, you cannot marry a woman without gills.