While the original Penitentiary was a quality independent film with vision and thoughtful material about what the prison and justice systems do to black men in America combined with a pretty good sports movie, Jamaa Fanaka's sequel strikes one as some combination of paycheck movie, out of control production, and a picture noted to death with attempts to capture the latest fads. There is a certain base line of fun in watching Mr. T and Ernie Hudson beat the shit…
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Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning 2023
Unlike most any long-running series, the MI movies are actually getting better. Ramping up the danger of the stunts as Cruise ages brings a real tension to watching. This one also really lets the ensemble around Cruise shine, particularly Simon Pegg. The train sequence is some of the best action these films have pulled off and other than a few moments of dodgy CGI, this is my favorite since the original.
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The Strawberry Statement 1970
This is the filmic equivalent of finding buried treasure and serves as another example of why Turner Classic Movies is such a valuable resource as I would have never seen this otherwise. I had never heard of this and basically decided to watch it on a whim, simply because it was being shown on TCM and the description sounded interesting.
The Strawberry Statement captures the college years as well as any film I've seen. It understands the balance between those…
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11’09”01—September 11 2002
Several shorts are terribly moving, masterful and sad such as Ken Loach's, Mira Nair's and Danis Tanovic's contributions. Idrissa Ouedraogo finds unexpected comedy. Others don't really work such as Sean Penn's and Alejandro Inarritu's. Shohei Imamura's seems inscrutable. Several filmmakers use this opportunity to try to open eyes to our own myopia in thinking our tragedy is "the" tragedy, that our experience trumps other nations, that the pain America itself causes is inconsequential in pursuit of our goals. Was this the right vehicle and time to do this? If not, then when? Art must ask uncomfortable questions and put our feelings and morality under its microscope.
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