It’s to Zombieland’s benefit that it pays no mind to the most obvious questions it poses. 1) Didn’t Shaun of the Dead already perfect the zombie comedy? 2) Is Jesse Eisenberg’s career relegated to playing neurotic 20-something virgins in movies with the suffix “-land”? Zombieland uses its redundancy as attitude—even the poster tagline wants you […]
Mark Palermo
Posted inArts + Music
We don’t buy into Capitalism: A Love Story
The last thing I wanted to see was Michael Moore make a comedic song and dance out of the death of the world. Capitalism: A Love Story is the most he’s managed to keep his ego at bay (ie: the least he appears in one of his movies) since Fahrenheit 9/11. But Moore squanders his […]
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New Fame isn’t going to live forever
Pitching Fame as a kid’s movie makes sense. I watched the TV series when I was in grade school, and though today’s kids know the franchise only by name, the popularity of American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance? make it a logical cash-in. But the new Fame‘s adherence to those shows’ careerist […]
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Tell your friends about The Informant!
Steven Soderbergh has spent the ’00s committed to making lightweight genre experiments. It can at least be said that The Informant! is one of the better ones. Though never bridging the dramatic disconnect that hurt The Good German, this film realizes its story isn’t that interesting. What keeps The Informant! on its toes is its […]
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Halloween II’s killing machine
It’s possible to see the movie Rob Zombie wanted to make in Halloween II, but much harder to see the point. It’s Zombie’s prerogative to not want this sequel to amount to “fun” horror. But repeatedly, we’re seeing through Michael Myers’ perspective, observing victims’ prolonged suffering. That’s how Halloween II ends up fetishizing cruelty. The […]
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Franchise reaches its Final Destination
The Final Destination can only rank as a complete imaginative failure. Selling bland fatalism to kids, it’s the work of crooks. The original movie had the best premise of any slasher film: Making the killer death itself, while teenagers question the uncertainty of their own mortality. Rather than expand the mythos, the sequels (and this […]
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Inglourious Basterds: the Palermo review
Every Quentin Tarantino movie is an event. The best moments of Inglourious Basterds translate his love of cinema into thrilling pulp. The weakest get off on comedic slaughter. With clashing tones, the pieces never quite fit. The historic context of renegade Nazi hunters is problematic action movie fodder. Moral inquiry may, as he’s stated in […]
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GI Joe battles disposability
“There’s no distinction anymore,” I answered when asked if G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is for kids or nostalgic adults. The latest in toy-line cinema delivers the usual ADD blockbuster formula: Two lines of exposition, followed by three shots of vehicles moving around. Stephen Sommers’ brand of effects chaos is lighter on its feet […]
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In Memory: John Hughes
John Hughes’ movies end with freeze frames. These are moments (Bender thrusting his fist in the air in The Breakfast Club; Samantha kissing her dream boy in Sixteen Candles; Ferris Bueller knowing he’s opened his best friend’s eyes; John Candy’s warm grin in Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Uncle Buck) where characters found the satisfaction […]
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Apatow’s Funny People can’t see straight
In Funny People, Judd Apatow inserts real documentary footage of his daughter singing “Memory” in her school performance of Cats, and makes it a story point. That says everything about Funny People‘s inflated sense of importance. Apatow hasn’t a touch for big-screen comedy (not in pacing, composition, nor attitude). He prioritizes mass acceptance too highly […]
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Hurt Locker masculine mirror
It took a female director to make an Iraq War movie a truthful examination of manhood. The Hurt Locker avoids obvious political agendas for something more primal: The mindset that values war as a daredevil flirtation with death. Legendary filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow contrasts the cocky war addiction of bomb squad Sgt. James (Jeremy Renner), with […]
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Orphan just another kid
It’s about time a movie capitalized on the paralyzing phobia of orphans. That doesn’t stop Orphan from playing as just another evil kid horror—next in line to The Bad Seed, The Omen, Mikey and The Good Son. All that elevates Orphan is the title child performance by Isabelle Fuhrman, equalling the range of evil displayed […]