Basic

Basic
Film review by: Witney Seibold

            “Basic,” the new military murder mystery from John McTiernan starring John Travolta and Connie Nielsen, is full of plot twists, diabolical schemes, guilty wrongdoers, and dark taut music.

The Hunted (2003)

Wilderness Survival
Film review by: Witney Seibold

            When I was about 14, I took a wilderness survival course at Boy Scout camp. It was taught by a grizzled Scoutmaster who knew how to make a working drawbridge with sticks and twine. He seemed to want more than anything to be lost in the woods someday, presumably so he could practice his ultramasculine skills of building fires and eating toads. It is in this sweaty, manly mindset that William Friedkin’s film “The Hunted” takes place.

Spider

Spider
Film review by: Witney Seibold

            Dennis “Spider” Cleg nervously shuffles into a dusty, dry halfway house on the outskirts of London. You can practically smell the uncleanliness.

Daredevil

Daredevil
Film review by: Witney Seibold

            Comic book fans are becoming more and more powerful.

All the Real Girls

All the Real Girls
Film review by: Witney Seibold

            Love can bring pain, misery, chaos, upheaval, jealousy, and regret. Why then, do we even bother? Because sometimes, maybe even only once, we find that person who makes our average lives seem important.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

Newlyweird Game
Film review by: Witney Seibold

            Sometimes the funniest jokes are the ones where you are the object of derision (Remember the oeuvre of Andy Kaufman?). When we finally realize that we’ve been had, we can chuckle at ourselves, learn, and maybe avoid being made a sap again. Until, of course, the next time. Trash game show spinman Chuck Barris has played the ultimate prank on us with his memoirs, in which he states that aside from being creator and host of such widely criticized shows as “The Dating Game” and “The Gong Show,” he was secretly an assassin for the CIA. True? Well, what’s the fun in knowing for sure?

Chicago

Chicago
Film review by: Witney Seibold

            Unfortunately for the majority of contemporary film-going audiences, musicals have become taboo.

City of God

Once Upon a Time in Brazil
Film review by: Witney Seibold

 

            Up front: “City of God” is one of the best films of the year.

Love Liza

Misery of Errors
Film review by: Witney Seibold

            It’s hard to sum up Todd Louiso’s “Love Liza.” It is a powerful meditation, and begins feeling very honest in the Cinematic Realism sense, á la Mike Leigh or Lynne Ramsay. But then, it becomes so hopeless, and meanders along the same path for so long, one wonders if the filmmakers intended the level of hopelessness and misery that the film presents.

Bangkok Dangerous (2008)

Bangkok Dangerous (2008)

Film review by: Witney Seibold

The Pang Brothers, Danny and Oxide, remake their own 1999 film, this time with Nicolas Cage in the central role. Man oh man, is this a stupid movie.