BITCHSLAP STATS |
Movies Listed: |
32556 |
Total Ratings: |
249503 |
Total Reviews: |
28801 |
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TOM AND JERRY |
"Mouse In Manhattan"
Peter Sobczynski says... "If I had to make a list of the films of the new millennium that inexplicably flopped when they first came out but which were most deserving of being rediscovered and properly appreciated, “Looney Tunes: Back in Action,” Joe Dante’s delirious and delightful 2003 live-action/animation hybrid that worked both as a tribute to the strongest and most nuanced collection of cartoon characters produced by any one studio and as a welcome riposte to “Space Jam,” the financially successful but artistically and comedically bankrupt 1996 film that brought Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and the other characters in the Warner Brothers canon back and then had them literally playing backup to Michael Jordan. I found myself thinking a lot about that film while watching “Tom and Jerry”—pretty much in the same way that a drowning man might idly think of a life raft just before going under for the third time. Hell, this attempt to bring back the hyper violent cat-and-mouse team is so dreadful that there were times when I actually found myself thinking that maybe “Space Jam” wasn’t quite that bad after all." (more)
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STYLIST, THE |
"Sharp and gory."
Rob Gonsalves says... "Claire (Najarra Townsend) is a hair stylist, and a good one. A loner who lives with a limping little dog, her attempts at small talk with her clients are a bit awkward, but she’s trusted enough to get a wedding-hairdo gig for Olivia (Brea Grant), a hard-charging magazine editor. What Olivia doesn’t know is that Claire is lonely to the point of psychosis." (more)
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SAINT MAUD |
"Another art-house horror calling card."
Rob Gonsalves says... "Every couple of years, a little oddity emerges from the indie-cinema beat and gets lionized as the next great thing to happen to horror. Generally these films are scrupulously calibrated and express the drive and obsession that a young filmmaker — in this case, Rose Glass, a British writer-director about thirty — feels about a story or a theme. What they don’t express is true fear." (more)
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WANTING MARE, THE |
"A noble effort, anyway."
Rob Gonsalves says... "If you’re anything like me, you sometimes find the idea of engaging with difficult art — dry philosophical writing, discordant music, slow and artsy film — more appealing than the reality of it." (more)
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TENET |
"Ride, captain, ride..."
Rob Gonsalves says... "There’s a guy, brave and smart. We’ll call him the good guy. Watch now as we point him in the direction of the bad guy. The bad guy wants to make everything die. Why? Because he’s the bad guy. The good guy, being the good guy, must stop the bad guy." (more)
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BAD ATTITUDE: THE ART OF SPAIN RODRIGUEZ |
"Street scenes."
Rob Gonsalves says... "On a lot of levels, Les Daniels’ 1971 book "Comix: A History of Comic Books in America" tweaked my ideas of what comics could be. Spain Rodriguez’ anti-bourgeois underground comix hero Trashman was a particularly sharp tweak." (more)
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JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH |
"An American Tale"
Peter Sobczynski says... "In the late 1960s, Fred Hampton was, in the eyes of the F.B.I., one of the most dangerous men in America. With his galvanizing combination of righteous anger and fierce rhetoric, he spoke out against racism, poverty and other social ills and preached a form of social revolution that inspired and united groups of people that would never have otherwise come together and challenged the existing power structure and those ruled over it. Hampton’s rise and the increasingly elaborate efforts by the government to bring him down by any means necessary are at the center of “Judas and the Black Messiah,” Shaka King’s mesmerizing docudrama that not only expertly brings to life an almost unbelievable sliver of recent American history but makes it relevant to the turbulent times that we currently live in as well." (more)
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NOMADLAND |
"An American Tale"
Peter Sobczynski says... "I must confess that I was not particularly eager to sit down and watch “Nomadland” when the opportunity first presented itself last fall. This, I should point out, was not meant as a slight towards either writer-director Chloe Zhao, whose “The Rider” was justifiably celebrated when it came out a couple of years ago, or star Frances McDormand, whose bona fides hopefully require no further explanation. No, it was the film’s premise that set me off a bit. To hear reduced to a couple of sentences, it sounds like one of those films about people trying to come to terms with things that are as noble as can be but which ultimately prove to be a bit of a chore to sit through—the kind of film that one admires more than actually enjoys. Of course, the combination of professional obligation and its early status as a potential leader in the current award season ensured that I would put my misgivings aside and finally sit sown and watch it. I am glad that I did because rather than the well-meaning stiff that I feared it might be, it proved to be one of the year’s most engrossing and thought-provoking films featuring one of the very best performances to boot." (more)
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FILMS I NEGLECTED TO REVIEW: THAT'S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK. by Peter Sobczynski |
"Please enjoy short reviews of "Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar," "Land," "The Mauratanian," "To All The Boys: Always and Forever," "The World to Come" and the new Criterion Collection edition of the 1974 conspiracy thriller classic "The Parallax View."" (more) |
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'YOU WASTED $150,000 ON AN EDUCATION YOU COULDA GOT FOR $1.50 IN LATE FEES AT THE PUBLIC LIBRARY.'
- Will, Good Will Hunting
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