Film diary

Like an 11-year-old boy on a Lucky Charms bender scribbled out a screenplay and then picked up the phone and hired legit Hong Kong action pros to make it. If anyone has ever shot anything more entertaining on location in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I have yet to see it (and would desperately love to see it).

I’m not a superhero enthusiast, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Spidey, maybe because his origin story, while admittedly rife with the tiresome trappings of adolescent male power fantasy, is at its core a coming-of-age tale. In that tradition, 2018’s Into the Spider-Verse allows its Spider-Man, Miles Morales, to not only find himself, but also find his tribe: a variety of spider-heroes, each representing a different far-flung dimension. The demographically diverse influx of… See more →

May we all achieve Bob Flanagan’s level of self-knowledge and self-love, even if it ultimately fails to prepare us to confront death. Bob’s poem, “Why?,” is going to stay with me. “Because you always hurt the one you love.”

I was due for a trashy true crime brain drain, and this one seemed like it would fit the bill. I didn’t expect much from it, but I never could have imagined the story of an extramarital affair culminating in someone getting hacked to bits with an axe could be such a snooze. It’s at least three times as long as it needs to be, heavily padded with repetition, superfluous characters and details, and a… See more →

I first saw (and loved) the Dimension Films cut of Police Story 3 when it was released in the U.S. in 1996. For years, I didn’t even know it was a sequel, since the American version was simply titled Supercop. Twenty-seven (!) years later, thanks to Criterion Channel, I’ve finally seen the original version, and the differences are fascinating.

• Score: I don’t remember much about the Dimension version’s score, but I do remember it being… See more →

I only made it through about 20 minutes of this, and I think the filmmaker’s vision is at present too underdeveloped to sustain a feature length, but I’d still much rather see more of this kind of unorthodox exploration than another round of rote Blumhouse banality.

Side note for my fellow graphic design pedants: I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone miss the point of dot leaders quite so flagrantly as the opening credits of … See more →