Extract is the third live-action film written and directed by Mike Judge, creator of the hit animated TV series Beavis and Butt-head and King of the Hill (which will broadcast its final episode this coming Sunday after 13 seasons). Judge’s first was 1999’s Office Space and the second was the dysgenic sci-fi satire Idiocracy, which 20th Century Fox hostilely dumped into … [Read More]

Are men to blame for the economic crash? That’s become a popular theme in the press. For example, the BBC’s business editor Robert Peston recently stated in “Why men are to blame for the crunch:” “I routinely characterise the credit crunch as ‘men behaving badly’—because it’s almost impossible to find a woman to blame.” He went on to list the usual … [Read More]

While watching Inglourious Basterds, I had time on my hands to ponder once again whether Quentin Tarantino’s variegated gifts and inclinations would have made him even more suited for other careers. Reviewing Kill Bill: Vol. 2 back in 2004, I wrote, “His talents, while broad, don’t mesh well together. He should instead direct others’ scripts, while reserving his own writing—with its … [Read More]

Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp’s Malthusian fable of post-Apartheid Johannesburg. District 9, a violent science fiction movie set in a Johannesburg slum inhabited by 1.8 million feckless refugee space aliens, is the critical and commercial ($37 million opening weekend) hit of the moment. Yet, few Americans (except the black critic Armond White, who has made himself wildly unpopular with fanboys of … [Read More]

The publicity machine is now gearing up for documentarian Ken Burns’s twelve-hour extravaganza, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, which will run for six straight nights on PBS starting September 27. This being a Ken Burns series, the predominant theme of The National Parks will be “diversity.” So, if you go camping in a national park this month, check out the … [Read More]

I was trying to watch with my wife the DVD of He’s Just Not That Into You, which is to romantic comedies what Watchmen is to superhero flicks: a confusing bundle of plotlines about the upscale romantic entanglements of what used to be called yuppies. To pass the time while a heartbroken Ben Affleck moves out of Jennifer Aniston’s condo and … [Read More]

Barack Obama, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and the African-American Master Class Countless pundits have debated whether the Henry Louis Gates Jr. brouhaha is about race or class. In truth, Barack Obama’s maladroit but heartfelt interjection of his own prejudices into the controversy stemmed from a quite precise intersection of race with class. Obama spoke out in defense of Gates’s tantrum because … [Read More]

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince earned a record $394 million worldwide in its opening week, an extraordinary amount for a film based on the sixth (and penultimate) installment in J.K. Rowling’s series of fantasy novels. The striking title certainly didn’t hurt. The term “Half-Blood Prince” evokes ancient political longings for a leader destined by birth to unite two squabbling clans, … [Read More]

Every so often, an action hit comes out of nowhere—Mad Max, Terminator, Ricci v. DeStefano. Inevitably, we start hoping that the big budget follow-up can keep the same excitement going, just with huger explosions. A few times—Road Warrior, Terminator II—our dreams come true. I’ve got to say, though, that this Ricci sequel, The Senate Sotomayor Hearing, has so far been the … [Read More]

Public Enemies, Michael Mann’s dual biopic about Depression Era bankrobber John Dillinger (played by an introverted Johnny Depp) and G-Man Melvin Purvis (an impassive Christian Bale), is representative of a growing micro-genre: the artistically ambitious crime period piece so stuffed with celebrated masculine talent that bothering to entertain the audience wound up as the lowest priority. The most stereotypical recent example … [Read More]