Tron: Legacy a Movie Review

by John Lobell

It is bad enough that movies have become so formulaic, but when they are, they could at least follow the rules of the formula.

In Tron: Legacy, we have:
- Search for and reconciliation with the father
- Travel to the underworld for the completion of the self
- Travel to the underworld to save the world
- The realization that technology cannot replace humanity Read the rest of this entry »

Black Swan: A Movie Review

by John Lobell

A female ballet dancer in a New York Lincoln Center company has for too long been passed over, but now she has been chosen for a role in a reworked Swan Lake which will require her to dance both the role of the pure White Swan, and the aggressive erotic Black Swan.  She is perfect for the White Swan, but her sexual repression keeps her from capturing the Black.  The movie presents her sexual/artistic (they are one) awakening. Read the rest of this entry »

Skyline: A Movie Review

by John Lobell

[Spoiler alert] Mummy movies begin with the 1932 film The Mummy starring Boris Karloff, and subsequent mummy movies follow the pattern it lays down. Our mummy, who has survived for thousands of years (by the miracle of tana leaves) is seeking to kill a contemporary woman whom he intends to resurrect as his long lost love. The two of them will then become immortal and will hobnob with the gods. Read the rest of this entry »

Shyamalan’s Devil: A Movie Review

by John David Ebert

Kierkegaard, in his book The Concept of Anxiety, said that Adam, even before the Fall, existed in a state of absolute, utter dread. The dread, however, only arose in him when God laid on him the prohibition not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. At that moment, he realized he had a choice: to eat it, or not to eat it. Thus, anxiety and dread are rooted in the fact that we as human beings have a free will. Kierkegaard says that this is like the state of a man standing on the edge of a precipice, who peers over and is made dizzy by the fact that he could, if he wanted to, throw himself over. It is our awareness of our own ability to choose our fate that lies at the root of human existential anxiety. Once Adam chooses to sin, he makes a leap into sin out of conscious choice, and the rest, as they say, is history. Read the rest of this entry »

Sinners in the Fins of an Angry Fish:

A Review of Piranha 3D:

by John David Ebert

I was ten years old when the original 1978 Piranha came out. It was Joe Dante’s first film (he would later go on to do The Howling, Gremlins and Innerspace) which he made for Roger Corman in something like two weeks. Steven Spielberg has always said that it was his personal favorite of all the Jaws rip-offs. The sequel, Piranha II: The Spawning (1991) was James Cameron’s first film, and also his worst. The original Joe Dante movie, though, was quite good, and it still holds up. Read the rest of this entry »

Inception: A Movie Review

by John David Ebert

Inception is the latest film from Christopher Nolan, of whose two earlier films The Dark Knight and The Prestige I am a huge fan. I think he’s less successful this time out, since this film is not as good as those others, but it is still worth seeing. Nolan is showing himself to be a skilled director with good storytelling instincts and he is becoming an auteur in an age when auteurs are vanishing. Directors are a dime a dozen these days, and most Hollywood movies seem like they are directed by the same person. The businessmen have regained power over the industry as they used to have prior to the film school generation of the 1960s, and directors are entirely at their mercy. As a result, there is little going on in film these days: no risk taking, just one “safe” commercial bet after the next. I’ve never seen Hollywood so dull. Read the rest of this entry »

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo:

A Movie Review by John David Ebert

I’m going to assume that anyone who has had any pressing need to see this film or read the book that it is based on has already done so by now, so that I can proceed to discuss the plot in detail without ruining anyone’s jouissance. Read the rest of this entry »

by John Lobell

[Spoiler alert] First, some personal background. I have for the past few years been consulting on a project called Timeship, a $300 million project devoted to extreme life extension. Put simply, the developers of the project object to death and intend to “cure” it, finding the genetic cause of aging and turning it off. (You can find out more at Timeship.org, and get the book on the project, Timeship: The Architecture of Immortality, on Amazon.) So what was fantasy for Mary Shelley is now becoming reality. Craig Venter has announced the creation of a new life form as he gains the ability to code DNA as facilely as computer programmers code C++. But as in all great science fiction, the core of Splice is not science, but metaphor. Read the rest of this entry »

Iron Man 2: A Review in Two Parts

By John David Ebert

1. Quaternio

At one point in this film, Tony Stark, who realizes that he is dying of palladium poisoning (the fictitious element that powers his artificial heart) sets to work in order to synthesize a new element that will enable him to replace the palladium that is currently poisoning him. He finds the design for this element encoded in a model of a prototype city (think of Disney’s original plans for EPCOT) bequeathed to him by his dead father, Howard Stark, who was a physicist and urban designer (sort of a cross between Walt Disney and Howard Hughes). Read the rest of this entry »

Harry Brown: A Movie Review

(Actually more of a political comment).

By John Lobell

Harry Brown, with seventy-seven year old Michael Caine, is in the tradition of Death Wish but it most closely evokes eighty year old Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino, even to the point of using the “Harry” from Eastwood’s earlier Dirty Harry movies.

Old retired guy, wife has just died, himself with lung cancer or emphysema, neighborhood terrorized by youth gangs, ineffectual cops, our hero good with weapons from war experience.  He becomes a vigilante and takes out the bad guys. Read the rest of this entry »