Friday, January 03, 2003
More film reviews...
With great power comes great responsibility. At last, an adolescent fantasy movie in which the special effects don't devour the actors. Spider-Man swings on the taut line between strength and vulnerability, between desire and duty, between temptation and justice. Big themes in digestible scenes, spiced with hormones and mythology.
The film is stylish and smart and equally generous in showing off its special effects as well as its actors (George Lucas, call your office). The film is extremely well cast, obviously with respect to Tobey Maguire, and equally so in the smaller roles right down the line. In contrast to so many other comic-to-movie adaptations, the bright palette of the scenes (green for Willem Dafoe's goblin, burnt orange for M.J.) feels rich rather than ridiculous. Spider-Man is the year's most thoughtful roller coaster.
Skimble says: 8 out of 10.
Julie Taymor's Frida takes a standard film biography and adds enough magic to lift you into the soaring realm of the artist Frida Kahlo's imagination while still staying grounded in the reality of her painful earthly existence.
Let's not discuss plot and exposition — that's the film's job. Taymor's stylistic risks in 2002 are tamer than Kahlo's were in the early twentieth century, but they are still wilder than anything else currently floating in the artist-biopic aquarium (e.g., the hideous alcoholism advertisement Pollack).
One of the most courageous aspects of Taylor's Frida, given the political spirit of our times, is her unflinching portrayal of Kahlo's and Diego Rivera's communism. Instead of portraying them as victims of a doomed ideological naivete, Taymor emphasizes the visceral idealism that fueled their lives and their relationships.
Skimble says: 7 out of 10.
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Greatest Hits
· Alternatives to First Command Financial Planning
· First Command, last resort, Part 3
· Part 2
· Part 1
· Stealing $50K from a widow: Wells Real Estate
· Leo Wells, REITs and divine wealth
· Sex-crazed Red State teenagers
· What I hate: a manifesto
· Spawn of Darleen Druyun
· All-American high school sex party
· Why is Ken Lay smiling?
· Poppy's Enron birthday party
· The Saudi money laundry and the president's uncle
· The sentence of Enron's John Forney
· The holiness of Neil Bush's marriage
· The Silence of Cheney: a poem
· South Park Christians
· Capitalist against Bush: Warren Buffett
· Fastow childen vs. Enron children
· Give your prescription money to your old boss
· Neil Bush, hard-working matchmaker
· Republicans against fetuses and pregnant women
· Emboldened Ken Lay
· Faith-based jails
· Please die for me so I can skip your funeral
· A brief illustrated history of the Republican Party
· Nancy Victory
· Soldiers become accountants
· Beware the Merrill Lynch mob
· Darleen Druyun's $5.7 billion surprise
· First responder funding
· Hoovering the country
· First Command fifty percent load
· Ken Lay and the Atkins diet
· Halliburton WMD
· Leave no CEO behind
· August in Crawford
· Elaine Pagels
· Profitable slave labor at Halliburton
· Tom Hanks + Mujahideen
· Sharon & Neilsie Bush
· One weekend a month, or eternity
· Is the US pumping Iraqi oil to Kuwait?
· Cheney's war
· Seth Glickenhaus: Capitalist against Bush
· Martha's blow job
· Mark Belnick: Tyco Catholic nut
· Cheney's deferred Halliburton compensation
· Jeb sucks sugar cane
· Poindexter & LifeLog
· American Family Association panic
· Riley Bechtel and the crony economy
· The Book of Sharon (Bush)
· The Art of Enron
· Plunder convention
· Waiting in Kuwait: Jay Garner
· What's an Army private worth?
· Barbara Bodine, Queen of Baghdad
· Sneaky bastards at Halliburton
· Golf course and barbecue military strategy
· Enron at large
· Recent astroturf
· Cracker Chic 2
· No business like war business
· Big Brother
· Martha Stewart vs. Thomas White
· Roger Kimball, disappointed Republican poetry fan
· Cheney, Lay, Afghanistan
· Terry Lynn Barton, crimes of burning
· Feasting at the Cheney trough
· Who would Jesus indict?
· Return of the Carlyle Group
· Duct tape is for little people
· GOP and bad medicine
· Sears Tower vs Mt Rushmore
· Scared Christians
· Crooked playing field
· John O'Neill: The man who knew
· Back to the top
 
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