Hobo with a Shotgun, like Robert Rodriquez’s Machete, is much better as a trailer than it is as an actual movie. And like Machete, it is based on a trailer– the award-winning trailer from Rodriquez’s own South by Southwest Grindhouse trailers contest. It is a single punch line stretched into an feature film. Fortunately, the punch line is a pretty good one. Read more…

On Sunday, the 82^nd Academy Awards will take place and the voters, of whom are 94 percent white and 77 percent male, will decide on best film of the year. The favorite is The Artist, while Hugo could provide an upset. Both are excellent films, I’ll be rooting for the upset. My top two picks of the year were not nominated, but I figured as a prelude to the show, I’ll post the Media Sickness top films of the year. No, I haven’t seen everything from 2011 yet. There was also no overwhelming favorite for me; I could change my mind tomorrow. The order these titles come in is almost interchangeable. Read more…

It has been a common misconception that Francis Ford Coppola lost his desire after going through the filming of Apocalypse Now. Of course this is not true. He still had some pretty strong outings (The Cotton Club) to go along with the massive disasters (Jack) since he went up the river in the Philippines.

His latest, Tetro, may not be as grandiose as The Godfather Trilogy or Apocalypse Now, but it is certainly a unique and wonderful work of art. Read more…

This dark, sexy, mystery-thriller could not be in better hands than with David Fincher. It is far superior to the abysmal Swedish version of the Steig Larson best seller. How the two films both scored 86% on Rotten Tomatoes is a mystery to me. The only thing the Swedish counterpart had going for it was that the characters actually spoke Swedish. Read more…

Lars von Trier has spent his career striving to be unconventional, and to push limits. Lately this has made him probably the most controversial director in the world. His recent film Antichrist, an exercise of grotesque masochism, divided audiences and offended many with its graphic scenes of genital mutilation. This year during a Cannes press conference, von Trier came off as somewhat of a Nazi sympathizer (he later apologized and said he would no longer talk to the press).

What can easily become buried in all of this madness is the fact the Dane is an extremely talented filmmaker. With Melancholia, this talent shines through. Here, von Trier is not trying to offend anyone, stir up controversy, or send viewers into a deep depression. Here he is executing his vision beautifully. Read more…

In 1988 Werner Herzog’s close friend Errol Morris released his documentary The Thin Blue Line. It was about a man falsely accused of murder in Texas and sentenced to death. Today it still stands as a timely and powerful argument against capital punishment.

Now, nearly a quarter-century later, with state-sanctioned killing still going strong, Herzog himself has traveled to Texas to make a film on the subject. Read more…

Moneyball, directed by Bennet Miller, ranks with the great Bull Durham as one of the best baseball movies ever made, and there may not be five minutes worth of actual baseball scenes.

No, this is a movie about the front office and the statistical revolution that occurred at the turn of the century in Major League Baseball. It’s about the new guard versus the old guard. The new guard is lead by Billy Beane, played by Brad Pitt, the esteemed Oakland A’s general manager. Read more…

Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest is the appropriately titled new documentary from first-time filmmaker, comedian Michael Rapaport. It chronicles the story of one of rap’s greatest groups and captures the discord between its two most prominent members. Read more…