What will it take to finally bring humankind together, to unite us all in respect and appreciation and a sense of shared purpose? How about a pack of vicious wolves intent on tearing us to bloody shreds? Judging by “The Grey,” director Joe Carnahan’s new deep-freeze thriller, that might do it.

The best thing about this movie is its shivery hypothermic vérité, a credit to the skill of cinematographer Masanobu Takanayagi, working under what must have been very trying conditions.

The story is set in the snow-blown wastes of Arctic Alaska, and the brutally frigid environment, with its attendant sub-zero temperatures, is vividly depicted—the actors, haloed in clouds of breath condensation, really appear to be freezing. (The picture was actually shot in northern Canada—not a tropical getaway in any event.)

The main characters are part of a group of oilfield roughnecks who were en route from their remote worksite for two weeks of R&R elsewhere when their shuttle plane took a dive into the icy tundra, leaving them suddenly either stranded or dead. Only eight men have survived. Fortunately, one of them is Liam Neeson, whose warm, hefty presence would be reassuring in any predicament. His fellow survivors are a traditionally mixed bunch: a couple of nice guys (Dermot Mulroney and Dallas Roberts), one wiseass (Frank Grillo), and one gentle fellow (Nonso Anozie) who clearly shouldn’t be making any long-range life plans.

Read the full review at Reason.com

Yes, the Woody Allen screen persona is well-known and established, but the actor does play different characters within that persona. Sometimes it’s just a few degrees off and hardly perceptible to the naked eye, but his Isaac Davis in “Manhattan” is noticeably unique. Isaac is something of an innocent, an unassuming man whose unwavering integrity comes naturally.

In a city like Manhattan, this, of course, might lead to his downfall, and the genius of Allen’s absolutely brilliant screenplay (Marshall Brickman co-wrote) is how this story is all about driving towards the film’s final line, a beauty of a closer that perfectly hits every cinematic sweet spot right before the fade:

“You have to have a little faith in people.”

Another of Isaac’s weak spots (and much of the film’s humor) comes from his inability to suffer pretentious, elite, liberal intellectuals. This is what likely cost him his first two wives, both of whom were pretentious, elite, liberal intellectuals. Overall, though, when we first meet him, Isaac is doing just fine. He’s making good money as a television comedy writer, is a loving father to his son, and his close friends — the married Yale and Mary (Michael Murphy and Anne Byrne Hoffman) — have taken him under their wing like a kid brother.

Isaac isn’t perfect; he is involved in a love affair with Tracy, a 17 year-old high school student. In his defense, she is more mature than he is and he refuses to lie to her. He’s very open about the fact that eventually she will have to move on with her life, that she has to experience life without him, and that what they have together isn’t permanent.

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This week on HomeVideodrome, Hunter reviews Haywire, Shame, and Warrior, Jim has cedar fever, and we plow through a cornucopia of new releases.  Head on over to The Film Thugs to check it out.

Okay, so I was a little hard on Real Steel when it came out.  Revisiting it, I still stick by most of my criticisms, as I still find it irritating that the intelligence level of the Hugh Jackman and Dakota Goyo characters varies to insanely disparate levels whenever the script finds it convenient.  Goyo’s screechy kid-who-talks-and-thinks-like-an-adult is also excruciating (the fault of the writing and directing, not the child actor), and their robot Atom’s suggested sentience is nothing less than a ploy to attempt to make the audience care whenever he gets pounded on.  And no matter how nifty the CGI robot boxing is, nothing can compare to the dramatic potential of two actual humans fighting in the ring for family, country, or dignity.  But when it comes to the stock fanboy line of the greatness of “robots hitting each other,” “Real Steel” trumps Michael Bay’s cynical “Transformers” films on every level.

“Real Steel” has a heart that has hints of saccharine, but the film has a touch of middle Americana that is lacking from mainstream movies today, and despite its shortcomings, the father/son story does have a potent emotional core that pays off when it should.  “Transformers” has none of these things, as Bay is only interested in boys and their toys, said toys including cars and women.  “Real Steel” has higher aspirations that don’t have the stink of pseudo-family-friendly misogyny and vapid materialism.

Hugh Jackman is such a likable lead that he’s laughable when he’s attempting to be unlikable like he is during the first act of “Real Steel”, however Jackman’s potent presence alone keeps this from ever actually hurting the movie.  He’s entertaining to watch, even in the worst movies he’s been in, as he was one of the few things that made Gavin Hood’s dreadful “Wolverine” something one could feasibly sit through from start to finish. The humanity Jackman brings as an actor pumps blood into the heart of “Real Steel”, more so than the undercooked boy-and-his-robot sub-plot could hope to.  The father/son relationship a the movie’s center is marred by an obnoxious child performance, but it hits the necessary emotional beats that help one overlook the painful dialogue fed to the child actor, as well as the delivery seen as acceptable by the director.  Because it it hits those beats, it manages to mask most of its flaws, giving the movie an emotional core that is lacking in most blockbusters.

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“Red Tails” is, simply put, a disappointing movie about an incredible subject.

The film tells the story  of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first all African-American flight unit in the United States military. The men and women–yes, there were female “Tuskegee Airmen”–who served in this unit were incredible individuals who overcame racism and the brutal intensity of war to become heroes during World War II.  Their story and the obstacles they overcame to become legendary figures in history, however, isn’t captured well in this patriotic but ultimately unremarkable film.

Directed by Anthony Hemingway, the story focuses on the group of young warriors eager for their chance to fight. Ambitious pilots like Marty “Easy” Julian (Nate Parker), Joe “Lightning” Litte (David Oyelowo) and Ray “Junior” Gannon (Tristan Wilds) compose this energetic and idealistic unit. These soldiers don’t focus on the racism that has held them back. They spend their time training and dreaming about getting their chance to shine. They want an opportunity to serve their country in epic battles but are repeatedly passed over for major assignments.

Their supervisors aren’t satisfied with their missions, either. Played by Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr., Colonel A.J. Bullard and Major Emanuelle Stance want their unit to have a chance to prove itself. While Stance is their overseas commanding officer, Bullard is their D.C. liaison and must continually battle against the racist sensibilities of the scowling and perpetually displeased Colonel William Mortamus (“Breaking Bad’s” Bryan Cranston).

In one well-done scene, the two argue about the unit, and Bullard tells the Colonel that he respects Mortamus’ uniform and rank but nothing more. That speaks volumes about the racism that these airmen encountered. They were asked to serve military leaders who often looked down on them and disrespected them. But the airmen served them knowing that they were serving their country above everything else. (more…)

In case you haven’t noticed from the endless barrage of TV commercials touting how many Golden Globes various films have won or been nominated for – or boasting about how many more-obscure awards films have won – we’re in the middle of Academy Award season.

That means movie theaters are filled with what are supposed to be the finest films Hollywood has to offer. But what was the worst movie of 2011? Surely Big Hollywood readers, with their hatred of George Clooney and Matt Damon, can name any one of their films for that dubious honor despite the fact that their films are almost always extremely well-made despite their liberal messages.

But surprise – there’s actually a movie so awful and filled with such vile hatred of middle-aged, suburban American life that even critics agreed it was a cinematic stink bomb.

That film is called “I Melt With You,” and it was recently picked as the worst movie of 2011 in the annual comprehensive critics’ poll conducted by the iconic liberal weekly newspaper Village Voice. While I’m often at odds with my fellow film critics over the underlying social messages Hollywood is sending out through its films, and the impact those messages have on viewers and society, this is a rare case in which we actually all agreed.

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My love for Blu-ray threatens every bit of financial security I’ve managed to build up over the years. Amazon.com is my dealer, and I am its numero uno degenerate junkie. The challenge is that most of my embarrassingly large DVD collection actually looks perfectly fine in 1080p, thanks to the enhanced technology of my Blu-ray player. Not all of my DVDs do; for some reason, 20th Century-Fox films tend to look a little blurry. But even Warner Bros. titles purchased fifteen years ago in those hybrid cardboard/plastic cases, when DVD technology was just starting to take off, look great. Not Blu-ray great, but plenty sharp and perfectly acceptable — which leaves me with no real excuse to buy them again on Blu-ray.

Still, what’s a junkie to do when “The Matrix” (the freakin’ “Matrix!”) Blu-ray goes on sale for $5.99? No sales tax. No shipping fees. Just that warm, ticklish feeling in the tummy that comes with the sound the UPS truck pulling to a stop in front of the house.

For those of you who share this dreaded disease, here’s something of a buying guide on some recent Blu-ray releases. Some of these I’ve rented, some I’ve purchased, and some have been sent to me as screeners. The pile got a little overwhelming, so rather than knock them out one at a time, this felt like the most efficient way.

Title links will take to you directly to my dealer, Amazon.

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I Don’t Know How She Does It (2011)

Sarah Jessica Parker, Greg Kinnear, Kelsey Grammar, and Pierce Brosnan are all game, but the script, based on Allison Pearson’s best-seller is a complete letdown. Maybe in 1983, a film about a woman attempting to juggle a high-powered career as a wife and mother might have resonated, but these days that theme’s been completely played out. With its cutesy voice-over and trite romantic complications, what we really have here is a sitcom episode stretched out over 90 minutes. Most off-putting, though, is a hostile mean-streak directed at that legion of left-wing apostates known as stay-at-home moms.

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FOX’s newest hit show gives viewers an unusual look at a familiar subject.

In the show’s version of history, when Alcatraz Prison was shut down in 1963, its prisoner population disappeared into thin air before they could be transferred to other jails around the country. Fifty years later, they begin reappearing one at a time, killing new victims.

San Francisco homicide detective Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) shows up to the scene of the first crime, the murder of the former deputy warden of Alcatraz, only to be unceremoniously dismissed by federal agent Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill). Rather than moving on, she begins her own investigation, leading her to author and Alcatraz historian Diego Soto (Jorge Garcia). Hauser is more than he appears, having been expecting the return of “The 63s” – the missing Alcatraz inmates – for a long time. Eventually he recruits Madsen and Soto to join his team and help him capture The 63s as they return. Joined by Hauser’s assistant Lucy Singleton (Parminder Nagra), they work together to investigate how The 63s disappeared and whose orders they are following now that they are coming back.

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Hollywood has learned something effective about conservative women: If you play them convincingly enough to left-wing stereotypes, people will believe that the caricature is the real deal. We saw this with Tina Fey’s portrayal of Sarah Palin where so many young people actually seem to believe Palin said she could see Russia from her house.

Expect to see a similar nasty portrayal by Julianne Moore in HBO’s “Game Change.” Moore confesses that it was hard to find a good side to Palin, and the miniseries is candid that her ambition outstrips her capacity. Hollywood knows well that you only get one opportunity to introduce these figures of national or international import, and they intend to make it bad impression on their behalf.

So it is with Lady Thatcher in “The Iron Lady,” whose creators have ridiculously compared Meryl Streep’s Thatcher to a modern-day King Lear in their disgusting attempt to dance on Thatcherism’s memory.

“Iron Lady” producer Harvey Weinstein, director Phyllida Lloyd and screenwriter Abi Morgan are engaged in a caricature of conservatism, through a caricature of Lady Thatcher and all those around her. Weinstein has even claimed that Thatcher is a “social progressive,” as if being pro-choice, pro-gay, and pro-national health service were all there were to Thatcherism.

Alas Weinstein and Streep never show us Thatcher’s considerable economic and political successes, preferring to spend two-thirds of the film luxuriating on her old age. This is as fictional as it is slanderous. We simply do not know how Lady Thatcher is doing because she has lived a life far removed from the press.

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When I got off of work on Friday, I checked the screening times for “Underworld Awakening” in hopes of finding a screening that would be sooner, rather than later, so I could go catch it, come back to my place, hammer this review out for you, and still have time to relax with a drink down at the bar near my apartment. My plan immediately stalled when I found that “Underworld Awakening” curiously wasn’t showing at any of the theaters close to me.

But before I had to admit defeat and hand the assignment over to Lauren Veneziani (who badly wanted to review this one here, but you can find her thoughts over at DC Film Girl), I saw it was playing in a few theaters well out of the way from my area, leading me to high-tail it out to the boondocks before I missed the next show.

YouTube

My first thought was that my local theater chain was shoving the movie aside, and that it was an omen that the movie was terrible, prompting me to prepare a long bit musing on this matter. I later realized they were only showing in 3D nearby and the 2D version had been given the short shrift. Since I don’t like seeing movies in 3D, I skimmed over it on instinct. Oops. Still, I went into it under a bad sign.

Not that I had high hopes for it in the first place. The first “Underworld” was a kinda silly but kinda entertaining vampires-versus-werewolves leather fetish party, with an elegant Kate Beckinsale as Selene, the po-face of the film. Its follow-up, “Underworld Evolution,” was a complete bore, after seeing it in the theater when it came out, I remember almost nothing about it, except that I couldn’t wait for it to be over, like when I go to the dentist.

One Beckinsale-less prequel later, and we have the fourth entry in what feels like a franchise that’s dead and doesn’t even know it.

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This is the film that rightfully announced the arrival of director and future Oscar-winner Peter Jackson and another eventual Oscar-winner, Kate Winslet, as the major Hollywood players they would later become. “Heavenly Creatures” is based on the eerie, unsettling true story of Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker, two disturbingly close friends and social outcasts who create an intense and obsessive fantasy life that eventually leads to murder.

Jackson’s ability to focus on the characters and their intense relationship goes a long way to explain why his “Lord of the Rings” magnum opus was so successful. This is a complicated psychological relationship-drama few directors could pull off so well, and there is no spectacle or CGI to hide behind.

Moreover, the undeniably brilliant, off-kilter tone of the story is handled with perfect precision by the director, and this, I think, is still the greatest feat of his career. “Heavenly Creatures” is a one-of-a-kind achievement that in lesser hands would’ve crashed and burned as absurd camp. (more…)

If you’re already a fan of director Julie Taymor’s look at the fascinating if sordid life of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (and I am), Blu-ray is really the way to go. Taymor did a marvelous job translating her considerable theatrical experience to the screen, and the lush, Oscar-nominated art direction that adds so much to the look and feel of the story is simply gorgeous in high-definition.

This is one of the better biopics of the last ten years, a passion project of Salma Hayek’s, and she is superb in the title role that rightly won her an Oscar nomination. What ultimately makes the story of two openly communist artists worth watching (besides a solid screenplay and a number of flawless performances) is that it’s the story of a woman whose heart is at war with her bohemian politics. All that free love talk conflicts with her sincere love for her mentor Diego Rivera (an outstanding Alfred Molina), and ultimately they end up settling down into  what they might call a “bourgeois existence.”

Edward Norton has a small but memorable role as a surprisingly sympathetic Nelson Rockefeller, and Antonio Banderas shows up as David Alfaro Siqueiros, a fiery communist painter (who, in real life,  participated in an assassination attempt on Leon Trotsky). It’s a single scene cameo but one of the best  in the film. Trotsky is also a major player in the latter half of the story in the person of Geoffrey Rush, and you’ll also spot the superb Diego Luna, as well as Valeria Golino and Saffron Barrows.

The one weak spot is Ashley Judd as Italian photographer Tina Modotti. Her accent is so bad you just know that somewhere Kevin Costner is smiling.

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Gina Carano might just be the next female action superstar, but it won’t be thanks to “Haywire.”

The new film shows Carana easily translating her MMA fighting chops to the big screen, and all that scrapping clearly didn’t mar her lovely features. But director Steven Soderbergh can’t leverage Carano’s unique screen presence, nor a cast far too good for such a rote spy caper.

“Haywire” marks Soderbergh’s second consecutive genre outing, and it’s clear he’s ill-suited for pulp. Last year’s “Contagion” couldn’t rouse our senses despite the fictional death of millions. Now, with “Haywire,” the soon-to-retire auteur wastes the debut of an electric lead.

Carano stars as Mallory, a private government contractor who takes assignments nations don’t want to claim as their own. The film’s electric opening finds her squaring off with a fellow agent (Channing Tatum, looking suitably hung over) in a diner and fleeing the scene in a stranger’s sports car.

It’s a grand introduction to Carano, who survives a splash of steaming coffee to the face and keeps on kicking.

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The Blu-ray cover art tells us “Real Steel” is “Rocky” with robots! but that’s a little too kind. This story of a down-on-his-luck promoter trying to eke out a living in the year 2020 where robot boxing’s taken the place of the real thing, is probably a little closer to another Sylvester Stallone film, “Over the Top.” To be fair,  though, “Real Steel” is a whole lot better than Stallone’s arm-wrestling cheese-a-thon, but both are glossy B-films and both involve losers who live on the fringes of an athletic subculture before a son they barely know is dropped unexpectedly into their lives.

Hugh Jackman is terrific as Charlie Kenton, the promoter in question and a degenerate gambler and former boxer who lives a step ahead of a beating at the hands of his many creditors. Director Shawn Levy is equally good at showing us around the world in which our characters inhabit, where robot boxing is the top sport in the country and exists at every conceivable level — from nationally televised events as big as the Super Bowl to underground matches where the wagering and bloodlust rival a good old-fashioned cock fight.

Like most fathers in these kinds of stories, Charlie’s never known his son, Max (Dakota Goyo). Charlie’s been too busy aimlessly moving from one hustle to the next. After circumstances I won’t spoil bring the two of them together, Charlie’s still not interested in any kind of father/son bonding until he sees an angle where he can make $100 thousand by spending a few months with the boy.

With  money in hand, Charlie buys a new robot, but Charlie being Charlie, this new beginning is hardly that before he ends up flat broke again with no prospects other than the inevitable day his creditors catch up to him. His only hope is to steal the pieces of a new fighting robot from a junkyard, and this is where Max comes across Atom, an old sparring robot built to take a ton of punishment but not trained to win. Need I tell you where this is going?

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For some audiences it will always be too soon for a drama like “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.”

The new movie deals directly with the 9/11 attacks in the most emotional way possible, telling the tale of a young boy who lost his father in the World Trade Center.

Hollywood has danced around the subject for a full decade, but “Extremely Loud” stops the music cold. It’s manipulative in a manner that should feel offensive, and occasionally does, but director Stephen Daldry (“The Hours”) pulls the strings with a delicacy that makes one forgive the boldness of the enterprise.

But no amount of dexterity can save a final act filled with precious plot resolutions unworthy of even such a flawed presentation.

Young Oskar (Thomas Horn) is still mourning the loss of his father (Tom Hanks) in the 9/11 attacks, but a year after the “worst day” he finds himself starting to forget little things about him. So when Oskar finds a key tucked away in his father’s closet he decides it’s something his father wanted him to discover all along.

After all, father and son have been solving mental puzzles for years before 9/11, and Oskar thinks this is just one last riddle his father wanted him to crack.

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“Red Tails” tells an important World War II story of brave black soldiers chafing at the constraints of government-enforced racial segregation. It’s gratifying to finally see such a story told, with a complement of able black actors, in a movie to which the name of Tyler Perry is not appended.

So it’s too bad the picture is so resolutely old-fashioned and meanderingly paced (it’s a first feature by director Anthony Hemingway), and that it’s afflicted with distracting absurdities.

The story begins in Italy in 1944, with a unit of black fighter pilots – the Tuskegee Airmen – cooling their heels far from the combat action (the official military view being that “Negroes” are incapable of flying missions, operating complex machinery or much else, and are in addition cowardly by nature). Some of the airmen, like Captain “Easy” Julian (Nate Parker), are resigned to such systemic racism; but one of them, a kid called Lightning (David Oyelowo), can’t disguise his smoldering fury.(He’s an avatar of the Civil Rights era to come.) Meanwhile, a senior officer, Major Stance (Cuba Gooding Jr.), looks on, smoking a kindly pipe, while the unit’s commander, Colonel Bullard (Terence Howard), is away in Washington fighting the Pentagon brass for more meaningful duties for his men.

Bullard eventually gets his way, and his pilots are soon flying combat support for bombing runs against dug-in German forces. (When the unit is belatedly given up-to-date aircraft to fly, the men paint the tails of them red.) The Tuskegees acquit themselves valiantly (as the real Tuskegee airmen did), and soon—all too soon, I’d say—the white pilots who initially derided them with racist epithets are glad-handing them as buddies.

Read the rest of the review at Reason.com

Few filmmakers have been more alert to the possibilities of working with non-professional actors than Steven Soderbergh. His 2005 “Bubble” was an exercise in trailer-park vérité, and the 2009 “Girlfriend Experience” provided a crossover showcase for porn star Sasha Grey.

Now Soderbergh has constructed a high-profile action picture around Mixed Martial Arts icon Gina Carano, a woman alarmingly skilled in the ways of head-kicking, gut-punching, throat-wringing and related modes of cage-match devastation. Unlike Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry, and other movie-land action chicks of the past, Carano demonstrates beyond doubt that if called upon, she actually could put you in the hospital.

“Haywire” is an old-school spy-versus-spy espionage tale. It would be nice if the story (scripted by Lem Dobbs, who previously wrote Soderbergh’s Kafka and The Limey) made a little more sense; at some points you might wish it made any sense at all. Carano plays Mallory Kane, a black-ops specialist in the employ of an international security firm run by her shifty onetime boyfriend Kenneth (Ewan McGregor).

When a shadowy figure named Coblenz (Michael Douglas) commissions Mallory’s services in extracting a Chinese journalist from bad-guy captivity in Barcelona, Kenneth dispatches her there with a team that includes the prickly hunk Aaron (Channing Tatum); she’s also told to coordinate with an ambiguous local character named Rodrigo (Antonio Banderas). The operation is a suitably tense undertaking, crowned by a back-alley smackdown in which Mallory, in an explosion of leg-sweeps and gob-smashes, reduces an oppo gunman to twitching insensibility. This is pretty great to watch, let me tell you.

Read the rest of the review at Reason.com

Kregg Janke makes a very compelling case that the Showtime series “Homeland” is anti-American propaganda. After thoughtful consideration, I disagree. Not vehemently. But I disagree.

Janke could turn out to be right, and I will look like a sucker. Which is fine. Maybe I am a sucker, but there are worst things that being a plain old sucker…or are there? My overall point is that we’re one season in on a series that is an unfolding drama. Things that seem anti-American now might not be in the grand scheme of things.

Even with that qualifier, I don’t think Season One of the show is anti-American.

Spoilers Aplenty Ahead

As the series opens, CIA field agent Carrie Mathison (a seriously, ridiculously superb Claire Danes), learns from an imprisoned CIA asset in Iraq that an American P.O.W. has been turned by Al-Qaeda. She thinks nothing of it because there was no reason at the time to believe that Al-Qaeda had American POWs, much less that one had been brainwashed.

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FX’s modern-day, marshal-come-to-town western “Justified” is another bullet in the chamber for cable television and another bullet in the gut for network prime time crime drama.

The basic cable channels born of reruns and old movies have stolen the shield from powerhouse networks that once delivered innovative, complex dramas such as “Hill Street Blues,” “NYPD Blue” and “Miami Vice.”

While FX – along with partners in crime TNT and AMC – has honed its crime-story skills with sharp characters and combustible, yet sensible, story arcs, the old (lets say “aging”) networks are turning out the flabby, doughnut-eating beat cops of crime drama.

There are no gimmicks in “Justified.” Our hero can’t see the future, talk to ghosts, or magically tell if someone’s lying. His stories aren’t “ripped from the headlines,” and he doesn’t plunk evidence into the science machine to track down bad guys. He’s just a good man trying to make sense of a moral morass where his quest for justice and order is challenged by complicated relationships and hometown loyalties and allegiances.

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If you, like me, think Meryl Streep is an incredibly gifted actress, “The Iron Lady” will not disappoint you. But if you have any rational recollection of Margaret Thatcher, well, I can’t recommend you watch this negative, extremely biased production. If you do, get ready for some invented, manipulative drama.

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Most of the film annoyingly examines Demented Thatcher in her later years. Oh, the lingering, gratuitous shots of Streep in her confused wanderings! Why should we gaze inside this (completely fabricated) frail, crazy character? It’s the only way to tear her down. The filmmakers, seemingly confused about her actual, incredible successes, focus on her dementia and femininity while categorically denying her capability.

The grand economic prosperity Britain experienced during her service is covered briefly as flashing newspaper headlines, which strangely look damning from the liberal viewpoint–“Maggie’s Millionaires” and the like (what the liberal philosophy fails to recognize is that when the rich get richer, the poor get richer, too). There is no Reagan, save for a brief hallucination of dancing with him. There is a passing shot of Gorbachev. And the Falklands incident is dealt with as a tragic piece of history that she somehow managed to emerge from well. Predictably, the Armed Service personnel were for a war, while everyone else, including the United States, advised her not to escalate.

In her miasma, Demented Thatcher recollects her past as a series of political triumphs that simply serve to emphasize her failure as a human being. Maggie was reviled by most everyone who came into contact with her, including family and cabinet members. Her husband, (the love of her life), was affectionately civil to her – but only in her hallucinations. In real life he often called her “MT,” a not so veiled reference (by the filmmakers) to her presumed emotional state. How else could a woman break the backs of the unions in Britain but by reckless conceit and a complete absence of sympathy? Through all her accomplishments, her family is not depicted as being proud of her for a moment. Even her own daughter screams that everything is always about Mum’s political aspirations. Her husband leaves for South Africa, and the hallucination later asks how long it took her to notice he was missing. It is an extremely poignant scene when her son calls from South Africa to say he won’t be coming to visit. She seems only mildly fraught by his rejection. She’s the Iron Lady, after all. She must be a cold, heartless b*tch. (more…)

Director Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers” is aging as badly as the Aussie-fied mullet Robert Downey Jr. sports in the 1994 media satire.

Loud, brash and in your face, this collage of film stocks, styles and sensibilities made some critics squeal with delight during its 1994 release. Call that a chance to hop on the hip bandwagon, but looking back it’s clear “Killers” marked the start of Stone’s slow slide toward mediocrity.

“Killers” follows the infamous Mickey and Mallory (Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis) as they morph from amoral killers to media darlings. The two start out as lovebirds eager to taunt and terrorize the innocent, always leaving one person alive to spread their legend. They aren’t the most well thought out criminals, and before long they’re behind bars for their atrocities.

Even violent criminals can pick up celebrity cache if they play the media just right.

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