Epinions Recent Reviews for mangiotto

Modest Mouse nests in the Lonesome Crowded West

Tue, 4 Sep 2001 05:04:29 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - A wicked amalgamation of The Pixies, Jane’s Addiction, Archers of Loaf, and that Deliverance kid, Modest Mouse, an Issaquah-based quartet of suspected felons and all-around dangerous young guys, is a maddening and occasionally...

supertoys last all summer long, Spielberg's A.I. just seems like it does

Sat, 30 Jun 2001 08:35:30 GMT
rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - William Butler Yeats wrote a poem once about a human child stolen away by faeries into a Sylvan Wye. It was for an 1889 collection of poetry called Crossways, and it’s called “The Stolen Child,” here’s the chorus:

Come away, O human...

the marriage of heaven and hell: Milton's gods and Paradise Lost

Wed, 13 Jun 2001 06:32:06 GMT
rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - John Milton was stone blind when he composed the most important and influential epic in the English language. The apocryphal tale goes that Milton would sit all night in his chair composing perfect verse in his head, and, in the morning, his wife and...

What if there were no Wizard in Oz? Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor

Fri, 8 Jun 2001 06:18:02 GMT
rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - Before Apocalypse Now became the definitive retelling of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, Samuel Fuller’s brilliant B-movie masterpiece Shock Corridor (1963) lay claim to that odd distinction. It is a deliriously schlocky...

Cliché that will live in infamy - Bay/Disney/Bruckheimer's Pearl Harbor

Fri, 25 May 2001 21:25:28 GMT
rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - Pearl Harbor is an indescribably bad motion picture that is some kind of weird shambling mutant hybrid of Independence Day, From Here To Eternity, and, saints preserve us, Titanic. It never would have seen the light of day, but for...

Catherine Deneuve in Roman Polanski's broken menagerie: Repulsion

Fri, 6 Apr 2001 07:46:31 GMT
rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - Polanski likes to film adaptations of novels and plays – when he’s on, as with his adaptation of Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, he’s incomparable – when he’s off, as with his adaptation of Arturo Perez Reverte’s incandescently brilliant novel The...

the voyeuristic urge cruelly punished, pt. 2: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

Tue, 3 Apr 2001 20:53:47 GMT
rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - There are a couple of reasons why you shouldn’t ask a dim-witted redneck loner if he’s killed his momma. The first and most obvious of these reasons is that he might tell you.

About fifteen minutes into John McNaughton’s deeply disturbing...

Shawn Colvin's life so far, the long-awaited new album: Whole New You

Mon, 2 Apr 2001 00:52:09 GMT
rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - I went for a walk with Shawn Colvin today.

Popped her new CD, her first in five years, Whole New You into my weathered Discman, hooked Raimi up to her leash, and tackled our favorite trail. A ridge hike up along a valley that,...

Derrida, Levi-Strauss and Godard - the deconstructionalist dystopia of Alphaville

Sat, 3 Mar 2001 08:02:02 GMT
rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - There’s a sign that greats visitors to Jean-Luc Godard’s technocratic dystopia that reads: “Welcome to Alphaville: Science, Logic, Security, Prudence.” Each term is one half of a binary system – we all recognize that, but if we don’t articulate it at...

subverting traditional gender roles and the noir: Hitchcock's Rear Window

Fri, 2 Mar 2001 21:59:26 GMT
rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - One of Hitchcock’s most popular and least examined films, Rear Window has recently received a nice re-release on DVD and brought with it an issue that I find to be interesting in regards to the major schools of thought concerning the film. On the...

the child bride of love: Olivier and Fontaine in Hitchcock's Rebecca

Tue, 27 Feb 2001 21:56:38 GMT
rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - Keats based his entire canon on the search for the immortal beloved – the shining ideal that, once attained, becomes something considerably more mundane (Madonna/w-hore), but, clearly, the desire for what can never be had is something that is a staple of...

four characters in search of an author: Wenders's ode to Fuller The End of Violence

Tue, 27 Feb 2001 09:12:06 GMT
rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - The parallel is clear between Mike Max (Bill Pullman: Zero Effect) and Ray Bering (Gabriel Byrne) even though one is a billionaire Hollywood movie producer, and the other is a computer scientist charged with creating an all-invasive visual...

the end of the Hannibal Lecter trilogy: Ridley Scott's visually brave Hannibal

Fri, 9 Feb 2001 22:39:08 GMT
rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - Ridley Scott’s nailed it.

He’s recreated the dark fugue state of Thomas Harris’ grimoire Hannibal, and done so with the appropriate level of grotesquerie. It’s a cinematic geek tent – slide that nine bucks over to the querulous...

Jet Li in Tsui Hark's magnificent Once Upon a Time in China

Wed, 7 Feb 2001 04:57:12 GMT
rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - Wong Fei-Hung is a historical figure in China. He is a healer, a martial artist, and something of a spiritual Zen master – and, in 1991, the ninety-ninth film retelling or reworking Wong Fei-Hung’s increasingly legendary and folkloric tale was released...

Jack Nicholson and Karen Black in Bob Rafelson's sterling Five Easy Pieces

Wed, 31 Jan 2001 01:20:34 GMT
rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - When Mike Nichols’ counter-cultural masterpiece The Graduate is screened with Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces, what you get is a particularly insightful progression/portrait of a confused and listless generation suffering an extended...

the voyeuristic impulse cruelly punished: Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective's Scrapbook

Sat, 27 Jan 2001 02:11:12 GMT
rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - There are landmarks in my visceral education as, I am sure, there must be in the lives of any individuals of a certain age. For a lot of people it’s a dead woodchuck, a grandparent “in state” or, like the kids in Stephen King’s novella “The Body,” it’s...

a movie that makes Hubbard's writing actually look pretty good: Battlefield Earth

Wed, 24 Jan 2001 05:09:27 GMT
rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - "When I felt better about everything was when George Lucas and Quentin Tarantino and a lot of people that I felt knew what they were doing saw it and thought it was a great piece of science fiction. The book stood for something classic and this...

never trust anyone over the age of 30: Logan's Run

Tue, 23 Jan 2001 03:10:44 GMT
rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - The year before Star Wars changed the landscape for the science fiction film (arguably for the worst), Logan’s Run ruled the movie houses and the imaginations of youngsters already on their third Farrah Fawcet poster. You know the one...

along the scenic route: Sam Raimi's The Gift

Sat, 20 Jan 2001 07:36:51 GMT
rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - Sam Raimi’s banana yellow 1973 Dodge 88 Oldsmobile is Cate Blanchett’s ride in Raimi’s latest foray into the tepid waters of mainstream cinema. When it puttered on to the screen, I had a little flutter of hope deep in my fanboy heart – could Ash’s...

Joel and Ethan Coen's dustbowl odyssey: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Thu, 18 Jan 2001 08:21:31 GMT
rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - A mad mixture of The Blues Brothers, Sullivan’s Travels, and Homer’s Odyssey, O Brother, Where Art Thou? is the Coen Brothers’ paean to the Depression-era rural south told through music, images, and a fascinating combination of surrealism...

120 minutes of brimstone, 20 minutes of treacle Cast Away

Thu, 28 Dec 2000 21:58:21 GMT
rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - The title of this film is two words. It should be one, but it's not: its own opening titles say so.

This isn't a matter of illiterate folks stumbling into one another in the long Stygian night of "spelling" (not this time), this...

George A. Romero's seminal Night of the Living Dead

Thu, 14 Dec 2000 05:16:43 GMT
rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - Single-handedly changing the landscape of the American cinema upon its limited, largely drive-in theater, release in 1968, George A. Romero's grim, pessimistic parable of eroding race and familial relations maintains its ability to shock some thirty-two...

the last film I will watch by Garry Marshall:Other Sister

Mon, 11 Dec 2000 12:34:00 GMT
rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - In its way The Other Sister is every bit a monument to perfection as Welles' Citizen Kane or Kurasawa's High and Low. It is consistently and unrepentantly terrible to the extent that, for one long vertiginous period during its...

the machineries of joy: Cronenberg's astonishing Crash

Fri, 8 Dec 2000 09:54:18 GMT
rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - What if the arteries and veins of a city were the arteries and veins of a consciousness - a machine god of concrete and steel coming to life under what Harlan Ellison once referred to as an "alchemical nuisance," the florid aerosol, infernal...

Bruce Willis, Haley Osment, Toni Collete: The Sixth Sense

Tue, 5 Dec 2000 07:24:31 GMT
rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author mangiotto - A film that is essentially unethical to review, The Sixth Sense is the best time that I'd had at a movie theater in ages. After watching it again this evening preparatory to this review and with the perspective of Shymalan's new film...

Epinions Recent Reviews for mangiotto

Modest Mouse nests in the Lonesome Crowded West

supertoys last all summer long, Spielberg's A.I. just seems like it does

the marriage of heaven and hell: Milton's gods and Paradise Lost

What if there were no Wizard in Oz? Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor

Cliché that will live in infamy - Bay/Disney/Bruckheimer's Pearl Harbor

Catherine Deneuve in Roman Polanski's broken menagerie: Repulsion

the voyeuristic urge cruelly punished, pt. 2: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

Shawn Colvin's life so far, the long-awaited new album: Whole New You

Derrida, Levi-Strauss and Godard - the deconstructionalist dystopia of Alphaville

subverting traditional gender roles and the noir: Hitchcock's Rear Window

the child bride of love: Olivier and Fontaine in Hitchcock's Rebecca

four characters in search of an author: Wenders's ode to Fuller The End of Violence

the end of the Hannibal Lecter trilogy: Ridley Scott's visually brave Hannibal

Jet Li in Tsui Hark's magnificent Once Upon a Time in China

Jack Nicholson and Karen Black in Bob Rafelson's sterling Five Easy Pieces

the voyeuristic impulse cruelly punished: Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective's Scrapbook

a movie that makes Hubbard's writing actually look pretty good: Battlefield Earth

never trust anyone over the age of 30: Logan's Run

along the scenic route: Sam Raimi's The Gift

Joel and Ethan Coen's dustbowl odyssey: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

120 minutes of brimstone, 20 minutes of treacle Cast Away

George A. Romero's seminal Night of the Living Dead

the last film I will watch by Garry Marshall:Other Sister

the machineries of joy: Cronenberg's astonishing Crash

Bruce Willis, Haley Osment, Toni Collete: The Sixth Sense