There are dozens of close-ups of hands in Peter Weir’s Fearless, and mostly the extremities belong to Max Klein, the distant plane-crash survivor played by Jeff Bridges. What follows is not a comprehensive catalog but covers the majority of these shots. They are presented in the order in which they appear in the movie.
Smoke begins in Auggie Wren’s cigar shop with omniscient chatter about the Mets and ends in a deli with a made-up tale about how Auggie got his first camera. Almost everything in between is also bullshit, in the sense that its relationship with objective reality is utilitarian. We speak the truth when it suits our needs, but we shouldn’t let it get in the way of the story we’re trying to spin.
And I thought last week was grim … . With Eastern Promises dropping out of the box-office top 10, there is now only one movie in our rankings with a Rotten Tomatoes score over 53: 3:10 to Yuma.
In David Cronenberg’s The Brood, the monsters have the size and shape (and snowsuits) of little children, but everything else about them is off. You could point to their foreheads, or their noses, or their skin tone, or the color of their hair, or the way they move, but that misses the bigger picture. There’s no single element that makes these creatures grotesque. It’s the collection of features and details that approach being normally human without ever getting there.
Among cinematic monsters with any staying power, is there any quite as pathetic as the zombie?
Mediocrity rules the Box Office Power Rankings this week, with only two movies in the box-office-gross top 10 getting a Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic score over 56. Congrats, 3:10 to Yuma and Eastern Promises! You’re the best of a bad lot.
At Shoot the Projectionist, Ed Hardy Jr. is accepting nominations for “31 Flicks That Give You the Willies.” Although he’s not explicit about it, we can safely assume that we’re naming our favorite horror movies. The deadline for nominations is Saturday, October 13.
I wasn’t surprised that David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises topped this week’s Box Office Power Rankings, but I was surprised by the margin. Even though the Russian-mob movie took fifth place in overall box office this past weekend (its first in wide release), its per-theater average and enthusiastic reviews gave it an easy victory.
In this week’s rankings, 3:10 to Yuma staved off The Brave One to retain its crown, assisted in large part by movie critics giving the Jodie Foster vehicle mediocre reviews.
The grief in Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke is heartbreaking. Unfortunately, the anger in it is misinformed, facile, naïve, misplaced, unfair, inconsistent, unsupported, or some combination of the seven.
