Category Archives: cinema

were-worms?!

Watched The Battle of the Five Armies. How many ways would the author be appalled? Puppy-love between a canonical Dwarf and a non-canonical Elf. Their pheromones cannot be compatible. There’s a Laketowner named Percy, a family name from France. (The … Continue reading

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Awake how often?

The protagonist of the TV series Awake lives in two worlds: one in which his wife died in a car crash, and one in which their son died instead. As we see it, he spends a day in Hannah’s timeline … Continue reading

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The Curious Case of the Catchy but Inappropriate Title

In Mamet’s The Spanish Prisoner (1997), Joe, for a genius, is a bit stupid. Maybe he hasn’t watched enough movies. Jimmy tells Joe to “bring the Process” to their meeting in the park. Joe never mentioned that word to Jimmy. … Continue reading

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cinema 2012

This week I watched two movies that coincidentally opened in the same week in 2012. Neither delighted me. In Looper, the terrible threat to be averted is a gangster bent on — gasp — wiping out a group of retired … Continue reading

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love or nothing

In Watch on the Rhine (1943; screenplay by Dashiell Hammett from a play by Lillian Hellman) the penniless Count remarks, Blecher, we do not like each other. The Nazi to whom he hopes to sell information replies, But that will … Continue reading

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late antiquity

An argument is offered that New Zealand is the wrong place to film Tolkien’s works: One of Tolkien’s great accomplishments was making Middle-earth seem vividly old. Wherever the reader looks, ruins and crumbling statues poke through the lichen. […] To … Continue reading

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a shifting role

The original Nikita (1990) and the American remake Point of No Return (1993) had a minor character called Victor the Cleaner — played by Jean Reno and Harvey Keitel respectively — whose specialty was making evidence, such as bodies, disappear. … Continue reading

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