Big Fan

I'm a Giants fan. That's relative, though. I mean, I root for them, and shit. Being a born New Yorker, I'll always root for The Giants. The Yanks, too. In the absence of them in a playoff or series, I'll default to The Jets and Mets. I hate Texas, so that makes me a good Oklahoman. But my allegiances are loosely held. I don't know stats, scores, divisions, or even the names of all the players. I'm not…

Like most Nicholas Winding Refn films, Only God Forgives is bound to divide an audience. Refn's style; coldly vibrant narratives painted in detailed visual textures, stylish atmosphere and punctuated by often brutal violence, demand engagement. From his Herzog-on-acid Viking masterpiece, Valhalla Rising -- which utilized every badass fiber of Mads Mikkelsen's awesome being -- to the Walter-Hill-meets-Jodorowsky-inspired Drive, Refn subverts seemingly straightforward genre pictures by defying cinematic expectations. Only God Forgives, his interweaving tale of vengeance and retribution is every…

Gangster Squad probably enjoys a mid-January opening because the studio thought it was shit. It's not. Gangster Squad instantly feels like something you would willingly watch more than once if it were on cable and you were on the couch, awash in rainy day munchies, mid-afternoon chronic, and unwilling to go find the remote. Kind of like what I'll eventually do with Zero Dark Thirty.

That's not really a slam, either. I've seen The Day After Tomorrow 238 times that…

Until now, I’ve seen every Twilight movie.

But I didn’t wind up seeing the triumphant finale. I almost liked Twilight: Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 for how it finally played Stephanie Meyers’ bloated, meandering, retrograde tale of Bella Swan and her inexplicable worth to Edward, Jacob and tweens everywhere (not to mention their creepy moms) for the absurdist joke it really is. Director Bill Condon finally figured out a way to make haters hate (a little) less.

My review of Eclipse—two…