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Reviews
Pulp Fiction Art: Cheap Thrills & Painted Nightmares (2005)
A Loveletter to a Truly American Art Form
This charming 1 hour doc will delight anyone interested in graphic illustration, history or the literary arts. Basic background information about the rise, effect and fall of pulp magazines is well-depicted along with some occasionally fascinating archive footage. In particular a home movie interview with Norman Saunders that will leave you an emotional wreck with its honesty and rare Desoto footage that speaks volumes in a two minute clip.
Like any low-budget doc there are some mild technical concerns but generally this 'fact based' documentary hits right on the mark as a pulp art primer and a love letter to a truly American art form. 9 out of 10.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
I want my 2 hours back and the editors flogged
I am a sharp, creative 46 year old man with more than thirty years in the television/movie industry and this was simply a very slow, boring movie. I love spy movies from Bond to Bourne, and the classics like Three Days of the Condor, The French Connection and Day of the Jackal. I like slow movies by David Lynch and Martin Scorsese. But this - this was a exceedingly lackluster slow motion film noir vanity piece and it's mostly about how long Gary Oldman can stare meaninglessly into space without blinking! Remember all those long shots of people walking to & from cars, buildings and offices from the sixties? They're back! Minus the drama because editorial is cut like an Army Training reel from the Nixon Administration!
What really bothers me is how out of touch I am by hating this movie; I'm still shocked anybody could rate this any better than a generous 5 or 6 - it's just that bad.
If you like glacial pacing and subtext to the point of parody, this film may still be too ambitious for you. I can only imagine how bored a young person would be with this moldy old movie. Avoid!
An Omar Broadway Film (2008)
It's prison, moron, it's tough. Don't do the crime.....
I really wanted to like this film, I'm all about righting injustice. But this is just some inmates with a camera trying to blackmail the system by documenting "abuses" on film. Guess what? It's PRISON! It's OZ! You get there by doing something so bad that a dozen random people agreed you need to be locked up*. Of course there's going to be abuses, of course there's corruption, it's PRISON. I didn't see anything there that moved me to feel there's earth shaking injustice to reveal, it's PRISON, not daycare. Skip this one and shame on you HBO for putting on this crap. If this was a nursing home it would be a compelling documentary but it just feels like a day of lockup to me. *I'm sure there are exceptions, but I think in most maximum security facilities if you are there, you did something very wrong.