It’s 3:30 a.m. I originally posted this on August 12, 2013. Now I’ll directly address the person I’m going to make famous. You read this and misinterpreted it, you dope. Like that cretin who interviewed me for the long article, you thought I’d become some kind of emasculated, half-assed Buddhist, forgiving all transgressions and plumply…
Things I hate in movies
December 10, 2023
I’m a film fanatic. Medication and movies helped me defeat lifelong insomnia. Every night I fall asleep watching a DVD. My TV is now strictly a screen for watching films. I haven’t seen a TV show in three years. For some reason people tell me I need to start streaming movies and store them on…
Fear and discipline
December 4, 2023
One of my favorite films is Soldier, starring Kurt Russell. He plays Sergeant Todd, selected soon after birth to become a soldier. Set sometime in the future, the story is about how people can be trained to repress all emotions. Of course the training methods are absolutely brutal. The end result is soldiers who fight…
A great actor trapped in a bad movie
November 21, 2023
It’s so painful for me to see a great actor trapped in a bad movie. I love Jason Statham. He’s far more than an “action star.” His great gift is wordless acting, especially in response to something he sees or what someone is saying. He’s a master of expressing suppressed emotion. Stand in front of…
The armored man
November 9, 2023
One of my favorite films is John Frankenheimer’s Seconds. It’s been called the most depressing movie ever made. I disagree. It’s a cautionary tale. The movie is about a secret company that allows disaffected middle-aged men to fake their deaths and start over. For a fee the company gives the men plastic surgery, sets them…
How about movies that are not stupid?
September 23, 2023
I don’t like it when movies present the armed forces of western democracies as evil. That’s like saying, “I don’t like it when movies present young women as sexy,” I know. It goes with the territory. But I still find it irritating. I prefer movies that are not stupid. The misrepresentation doesn’t keep me from…
Because they’re not about people
September 22, 2023
I just read a film critic’s article about how he’s really turned off of movies right now. “I just don’t seem to care anymore,” he says. “I wonder what’s caused this—because so much of the public seems to feel the same way.” That’s easy to answer. Movies are not about people anymore. Characters have been…
On Forgiveness versus Revenge
September 21, 2023
I love the movie Murphy’s War, even though I hate the premise. Peter O’Toole plays Murphy, the only survivor of a British naval ship that a German U-boat sinks in the Orinoco River, probably in Venezuela. Murphy is the sole survivor because the Germans deliberately, methodically, and calmly kill all the sailors who go into…
Movie Beds and Food
September 19, 2023
I’m a film fanatic. Movies are my favorite art form. The last time I went to a theater was in 2002, to see the Mel Gibson movie Signs. I stopped going to theaters because the audiences were so ill-mannered, loud, and crazy. At the showing of Signs, a guy two seats away from me had…