In Kinshasa, Zaire, on October 20, 1974, in what was billed as the Rumble in the Jungle, Muhammad Ali employed a strategy called the rope-a-dope, letting the reigning heavyweight champion George Foreman pummel him for the first several rounds of the fight. Then Ali began taunting the wearying champ, “They told me you could punch, […]
Cinema
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Year Zilch
In the beginning was High Fidelity, at least as far as I’m concerned. An actor I’d never noticed before by the name of Jack Black was channeling Generation X energies like nobody else on the silver screen. His Barry, the record-store slacker-snob, stole the show and left me with the firm conviction that a new […]
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Talking Movies: Screening Evil
One morning in April, I went to take my dog outside before I had to leave for work. I stepped onto our porch on Iowa Avenue and saw a young skinny man standing still on the sidewalk across the street. A woman with a video camera stood at a distance from him. Moments later, the […]
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Talking Movies: Copping Out
Jody Hill’s Observe and Report is one weird movie. I’m pretty sure this dark comedy is meant to provoke reflection: The title suggests that the movie is holding the mirror up to our reality. In a sense, it is; the worst parts of the movie are the most interesting, and the best parts are pretty bad. […]
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Talking Movies: Chaplin on the Economy
Someone should write an essay called “In Praise of Pretentiousness,” because in the first years of adulthood—please, those years only!—a little insufferable pretentiousness goes a long way. It was pretentiousness, I admit, that led me into a Charlie Chaplin film festival when I was a freshman at Grinnell: I showed up to appreciate silent films. […]
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Talking Movies: Tears of a Clown
La Strada dir. Federico Fellini 108 mins In the early morning hours, at the end of a spirited drinking party, as passed-out sophisticates snore on the couches, an old man lectures two weary writers that tragedy and comedy have the same source, and that one who truly understands their root should be able to compose […]
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The Best Movies of 2008 (Most of which I didn't actually see)
Sydney Smith once observed, “I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices one so.” As a rule, I do watch the movies before reviewing them; though when it comes to the big Hollywood productions anymore, I wonder how necessary my principle is. So many of them have been made to order according to […]
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Movie Review: Australia
Australia Directed by Baz Luhrman Drama, 165 Minutes One of the great pleasures of the movies is seeing what a purposeful filmmaker can do with an old genre or story by attempting to remake it in her or his own image. Such was the case with Baz Luhrman’s last film, 2001’s Moulin Rouge, his hyperkinetic […]
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Talking Movies: A Half-Jigger of Solace
How many children does Lady Macbeth have? That’s the kind of ridiculous question a certain strain of literature teacher will torture students with. The answer, obviously, is: Shakespeare would have told us, had it been important. Nevertheless, there are a few characters who so transcend their storylines that they really do acquire lives of their […]
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Talking Movies: The Dude Still Abides
In the 10 years since the release of The Big Lebowski, a few things happened. Cell phones overtook our public spaces. The internet colonized our private time. George W. Bush won once in the popular vote and twice in the electoral college. On a single morning, terrorists brought down the twin towers, destroyed part of […]
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Appaloosa Movie review
Appaloosa Narrative, 108 min Directed by Ed Harris Once upon a time in the American cinema, the western was king. Between the silent era and the late 1970’s, the U.S. film industry churned out thousands of western movies, most of them toward the end of that time starring Clint Eastwood. Not so today, when fans […]
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Righteous Kill Movie Review
Righteous Kill Drama, 101 min Directed by Jon Avnet The buddy cop film has been a staple of the American cinema since at least the 1970’s, and it’s been tooled for everything from suspense to comedy to straight action, but rarely has it actually been about friendship. That makes Righteous Kill, the new cop drama […]
