Jake Cole
MY BLOGS
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Not Just Movies
http://armchairc.blogspot.com/
A blog containing reviews of film, television, album and books. Features a broad range of topics, from new releases to classics to forgotten gems.
LATEST ARTICLES ( 682 )
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Brian De Palma: The Untouchables
No one in The Untouchables, either cop or criminal, seems to have anything in the way of a moral code. Their lives are far more existential: the criminal... Read more
Posted on 29 May 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES -
Review: Kung Fu Panda 2
Posted on 27 May 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES -
Bridesmaids (Paul Feig, 2011)
The success of Bridesmaids prompted the usual round of hollow "Why doesn't Hollywood make more movies like this for women?" hand-wringing on the part of... Read more
Posted on 26 May 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES -
Somewhere (Sofia Coppola, 2011)
My brief review for Sofia Coppola's excellent Somewhere is up at The Final Girl Project. Coppola's most stripped-down film to date, Somewhere admittedly mines... Read more
Posted on 24 May 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES -
Brian De Palma: Wise Guys
After the veiled satire of Scarface and the open assault of Body Double, Brian De Palma finally caved to pressure and made the sort of film he'd spent the last... Read more
Posted on 23 May 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES -
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Rob Marshall, 2011)
There's no point in even trying to write a pan for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, not after Ali Arikan used his walk-out as an excuse to vent his... Read more
Posted on 21 May 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES -
Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2011)
Meek's Cutoff is an arduous trek through purgatory, the cracked and arid plane of reality separating the paradise a group of Oregon settlers seek to find and th... Read more
Posted on 21 May 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES, TV & VIDEO -
Doctor Who — Series Four
Russell T. Davies' final series as showrunner of his triumphant revival of Doctor Who encapsulates the full range of his highs and lows. Read more
Posted on 20 May 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, TV & VIDEO -
Female Fight Club: Jane Campion's Sweetie
Up at Cinelogue is a new and improved version of an old review I did for Jane Campion's debut feature, Sweetie. A tale of superego pitted against id, Sweetie... Read more
Posted on 19 May 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES, MUSIC, TV & VIDEO -
Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)
Nailing down an Apichatpong Weerasethakul film is as hard (and futile) as assigning "answers" to a Terrence Malick film. Like Malick, Weerasethakul builds on... Read more
Posted on 18 May 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES -
The New World (Terrence Malick, 2005)
Thus far in his slim corpus, each Terrence Malick film has solidified and purified Malick’s transcendentalist belief in the connection of man and nature, even... Read more
Posted on 17 May 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES -
"That's a Great Idea, Mom, and It's Very In-keeping with Our Image."
My review for Todd Haynes' vicious, bewildering, surprisingly emotional short film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story is now up at Cinelogue. Read more
Posted on 14 May 2011 MOVIES -
13 Assassins (Takashi Miike, 2011)
It's a shame that Takashi Miike's reputation in the United States is based almost solely on his double whammy of extreme gore, Ichi the Killer and Audition. Read more
Posted on 14 May 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES -
Steven Spielberg: The Lost World: Jurassic Park
Having filled my viewing gaps in Spielberg's filmography, the status of The Lost World: Jurassic Park as one of the director's weakest films, if not his worst... Read more
Posted on 13 May 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES -
The House is Black (Forough Farrokhzad, 1963)
Forough Farrokhzad, generally regarded as the greatest Persian poet of the 20th century, made her first film in 1963. It proved her last; she died four years... Read more
Posted on 12 May 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES -
Falling for the First Time: Gremlins
So I'm a guest at the Mad Hatter's The Dark of the Matinee today for his recurring series "Falling for the First Time," in which he discusses '80s and '90s film... Read more
Posted on 12 May 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES -
Brian De Palma: Body Double
In some respects, Body Double may be the quintessential Brian De Palma film. This is not to say that it is his best, and it may not even mean that I even like... Read more
Posted on 11 May 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES -
Brian De Palma: Scarface
That Scarface enjoys a position in the pop culture lexicon that only strengthens with each passing year serves as a validation of its deliberate excesses and it... Read more
Posted on 11 May 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES -
Rubber (Quentin Dupieux, 2011)
"It's not real life. Look at you, you have a stuffed toy alligator under your arm."For an 89-minute film based around a one-joke premise, Rubber proves... Read more
Posted on 10 May 2011 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES, MUSIC, TV & VIDEO -
Ulysses, Chapter Eighteen: Penelope
[Link to previous chapters here]With "Ithaca," Joyce achieved such breadth of language, so infinite, so microscopic, that you'd be forgiven for thinking the boo... Read more
Posted on 09 May 2011 BOOKS, CULTURE