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Category: Entertainment

Latest movie and TV news, in-depth reviews, opinion essays, plus book highlights. Your ultimate entertainment hub for films, series, and reading.

Friday the 13th Part 2
Entertainment

Friday The 13th Part 2 Review

William McPherson

If the first film in this series was “respectable schlock” this one was just pure schlock, and the series itself was still in the midst of finding its niche. Friday the 13th Part 2 is as straight of a by the numbers slasher flick as you could imagine. The introduction of the Jason Voorhees character (in unexplained grown up form) is the most historically relevant aspect of this movie, and of course, it is another direct rip-off from Halloween, perhaps even more direct this time out because adult…

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Friday the 13th
Entertainment

Friday The 13th Review

William McPherson

I recently bought the entire F13 series on the cheap in several 5 dollar DVD double features, and the wife and I have been watching a couple every week. It is interesting now watching these movies that I used to stay up late watching as a kid. These movies were designed to be seen on dates, or in big group settings, and so I found it useful to have experienced these movies with an extra perspective to take note of. Here’s the plot crunch. Way back in the late 50s young Jason Voorhees drowns in…

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Kill Bill 2
Entertainment

Kill Bill Volume 2 Review

William McPherson

Kill Bill Volume 2 is kind of the yin to Kill Bill Volume 1’s yang (or vice versa). Unlike the first film which was pretty much one action sequence after another with brief moments to set up the next ones, this movie stops occasionally to let the characters---even the villains have their moments of reverence to make their just desserts that much more meaningful/conflicted when they come about. Michael Madsen here has his second best role next only to his work in Reservoir Dogs as a trailer park…

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Kill Bill
Entertainment

Kill Bill Volume 1 Review

William McPherson

Here is a movie that lives or dies on style alone. The story is as simple as it gets, and makes no pretense about existing as anything other than a device to bring us gobs and gobs of sword play and one liners. Uma Thurman is one pissed off Bride on a mission to skewer all the dirty SOBs who murdered her groom and left her for dead at the altar. There were so many aforementioned SOBs it turns out, that this process takes two movies to complete said revenge. We even have the classic set up of the…

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American Beauty
Entertainment

American Beauty Review

William McPherson

This movie is to a dull suburbanite family existence, what Office Space was for a dull corporate office job—a fascinating glimpse at what it may be like to escape, with a reminder of the cost one would have to pay. People often forget that "American Beauty" is a comedy, because of how dark and deep it is willing to go, but it is, and at times a very funny one at that. It is also one of the most painfully human movies of my generation telling the story of a middle aged sad sap named Lester (Kevin…

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Cast Away
Entertainment

Cast Away Review

William McPherson

This review contains spoilers. SPOILERS I SAY! If you haven’t seen it, just move it along here folks. Now, onto business. Cast Away is a great movie that could have been an even better movie, in my opinion, if they lopped off more from both the beginning and closing sections of the movie. Tom Hanks plays a UPS man who is every Tom Hanks cliché rolled into one, a sweet, loving, and generally well liked by everyone kind of guy. He has a fiancée that he is about to wed, before fate and his job put…

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Gangs of New York
Entertainment

Gangs of New York Review

William McPherson

Gangs of New York represents the kind of old school cinematic excess such as Ben Hur and the Ten Commandments, with massive sets and thousands of extras, but with a modern arsenal of special effects to give it a little extra oomph. Daniel Day Lewis plays Bill the Butcher, the old school gangster kingpin of New York in the 1860s. Lewis plays Bill as a shrewd politician, and brutal schemer. His performance, like in most of his films, is the movie. Leonardo Decaprio plays the son of the man who…

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Leaving Las Vegas
Entertainment

Leaving Las Vegas Review

William McPherson

Ben is a divorced screenwriter, recently fired, who has given up on life altogether. A chronic alcoholic, he has decided to take what money he has left and go to Vegas where he plans on drinking himself into an oblivion. Along the way he meets a Vegas hooker named Sera (Elizabeth Shoe) who takes pity on him, and he on her, and they begin a romance so emotionally raw and messed up that it makes Fifty Shades of Grey look like a nursery rhyme. Nicholas Cage has starred in a ton of pointless, lousy…

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Road House
Entertainment

Road House Review

William McPherson

Road House is one of the best lousy movies of all time. It can be enjoyed on many levels too, such as the “Plan 9 From Outer Space” laugh yourself silly at how lousy it is level, the standard “turn off your brain” action movie level, a time capsule of goofy 1980s clothing and hairstyles level, and even a pseudo philosophical level too! That’s more levels than they sell at your local hardware store. Anyway, the plot, for lack of a better term; The Double Deuce is the roughest, toughest, and…

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Cop Land
Entertainment

Cop Land Review

William McPherson

Cop Land is a film that could have easily been a long mini-series with all its got going on in the plot. Garrison, New Jersey in this movie is a town populated entirely by NY city cops. It’s a nice quiet little community, as you would expect, and mortgages are quite reasonable; plus it sure as hell beats living in the same dump they all have to work in. This is so thanks to “Uncle Ray” the boss of the town--- a mobbed up cop played by Harvey Keitel. In a town populated by cops, the actual police…

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Pleasantville
Entertainment

Pleasantville Review

William McPherson2 Comments

David Wagner (Tobey Maquire) seems like the kind of teenager I used to be back in the 90s, that being a teenager obsessed with the past and especially the culture of bygone eras, in his case the 1950s, opting to spend hours in front of the TV watching old reruns instead of engaging in the shallow culture he finds outside. Only instead of Andy Griffith or I Love Lucy he is addicted to reruns of a classic TV show called "Pleasantville," set in a much simpler place and time where everyone adheres…

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The Fisher King
Entertainment

The Fisher King Review

William McPherson

What a strange and wonderful movie! And also, a movie that is sadly quite overlooked in the careers of both lead actors. Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges), is a self-centered, Manhattan shock jock in the vein of Howard Stern mixed in with a little bit of Rush Limbaugh. At least that’s the persona he puts on when on the air; at home in his luxurious high rise apartment, he’s just a regular guy. All that changes one night when an off handed insensitive remark triggers an unstable caller to commit a mass…

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No Country for Old Men
Entertainment

No Country For Old Men Review

William McPherson3 Comments

I was a little younger when I first saw this movie, and I did not fully appreciate it to the extent I do now. I was watching it expecting a satisfying formulaic action movie, and of course, if you watch No Country For Old Men expecting that, you are going to walk out pissed. In a way though I am glad I had the original experience with the film because now I can look back on how my emotions were so expertly towed with without my being as aware of the manipulation as I would be now. This is far…

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The Achievers
Entertainment

The Achievers Review

William McPherson

This was an interesting movie to watch for me, but I warn you going in, it may not be for the “uninitiated” any more than your typical screening of the Rocky Horror Picture show would be enjoyable for someone who either hadn’t seen, or worse, didn’t like that particular movie. The Big Lebowski was the first cult film of the “Internet era”, and I recall being right there in the early 2000s as the movement was gathering steam. I was immediately drawn to it myself because I had already liked the…

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Color of Money
Entertainment

The Color of Money Review

William McPherson

The worst thing about The Color of Money is that it is a sequel to The Hustler (for trivia buffs, also the first movie I ever reviewed on this site) and of course, it does not live up the heights set by that level of a classic. Almost no film could. That said, if one can view this movie without thinking of the former, which I admit is difficult, there is a very good film here. Martin Scorsese is at the height of his stylistic powers here in this period between Raging Bull and Goodfellas. Paul…

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Barton Fink
Entertainment

Barton Fink Review

William McPherson

Barton Fink is one of my favorite lesser known Coen brothers movie. In it John Turturro plays a brilliant stage writer for Broadway (from whom the movie gets its name) who gets lured to Hollywood in the 1940s to write screenplays for big studios. Turturro is perfectly at home as the naïve, paranoid stereotypical writer caricature who would prefer to write reality based social commentary rather than standard genre movies such as Lassie or whathaveyou. Of course he winds up hating Hollywood and…

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Django
Entertainment

Django Review

William McPherson

Spaghetti westerns might have just as easily been called Sergio westerns---as the three greatest directors of the genre all shared that same first name. Everyone knows Leone was the first, but probably at this point only real history/movie nerds know the other two--Sollima and Corbucci. Sergio Corbucci directed this classic Pasta Western back in 1966. The story is yet another play on Yojimbo, with a silent but deadly hero wandering through the desert who finds himself caught in the middle of two…

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Spy
Entertainment

Spy Review

William McPherson

Mellisa McCarthy is my wife’s favorite current actress. Her movies are a guilty pleasure for her as much as old Adam Sandler movies were for me back in the day. It’s the cinematic equivalent of comfort food, maybe not good for you, but good nonetheless. I am hit and miss with her movies. I find her shtick to be about as one note as your typical Tyler Perry “Madea” movie, but with added profanity and female bravado. This movie works though, not because of the quality of the story or writing, but…

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Thunderbolt and Lightfoot
Entertainment

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot Review

William McPherson

I literally cannot fathom how it took me so long to finally getting around to seeing this. Clint Eastwood has been on my Mt. Rushmore of actors since I was a fetus, and Jeff Bridges is also on that list. This movie sees them in different points of their career, Bridges is a young cocky little hippy named Lightfoot who opens the movie by stealing a car, and Eastwood is an old bank robber in hiding who opens the movie as the pastor of a church, before literally being run out of the congregation by…

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The Untouchables
Entertainment

The Untouchables Review

William McPherson

The Untouchables is a near perfect mix of cinematic ingredients. Even though it was filmed in the late 80s this is not a modern gangster movie like Goodfellas, or even the Godfather. This is basically a “Hayes Code” era film that somehow escaped in a time machine and wound up where it did. That said it is beautiful movie, wonderfully shot by Brian De Palma, with a classic score by Ennio Morricone (and with period music by Duke Ellington); and then you add in the dialogue from David “F*** You”…

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