items tagged with Oprah Winfrey

SAW 3D

In the first 10 minutes of Saw 3D, a grim-faced cop enters an interrogation room and addresses his visitor with a curt “Let’s get this over with.” I couldn’t agree more!

DOUBT

Based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, writer/director John Patrick Shanley's period drama Doubt - set in 1964, and concerning a nun who suspects a priest of sexual misconduct with an altar boy - isn't much of a movie. Shanley's previous directorial effort was 1990's Joe Versus the Volcano, and it's a shame he wasn't able to get in more practice over the last 18 years; in an attempt to gussy up the visual blandness that accompanies most theatrical adaptations, Shanley opts for a series of high- and low-angle shots and symbolic thunder, lightning, and wind effects that oftentimes make Doubt resemble a satire of a low-budget horror flick. And it's still visually bland.

THE RULES OF ATTRACTION

Roger Avary’s The Rules of Attraction, based on yet another Bret Easton Ellis (Less Than Zero, American Psycho) novel about soulless, loathsome yuppie scumbags of the ’80s, is vile, venal, and sometimes shockingly distasteful. I loved it.

FREQUENCY

All tearjerkers, in one way or another, focus on death. Tearjerkers for Guys, however, focus on the death (or impending death) of one's father. For my money, the crème de la crème of this genre is Field of Dreams, where Kevin Costner's love of baseball (another Tearjerkers-for-Guys staple) leads to the resurrection of his long-deceased dad, and which is so shamelessly manipulative and contrived and romantic about its supernatural and spiritual possibilities that it's irresistible.