The Infiltrator Movie Review

The world surely has no shortage of movies about the international drug trade or about law enforcement using everything in their arsenal to take down the cartels. There’s also plenty of movies about the perils of going undercover to take down a criminal organization. The Infiltrator combines both for a premise that is not especially original, but which is often enthralling. There’s something about the story of a person who goes into another world pretending to be something they’re not. There’s the adrenaline rush of going into the danger zone. There’s the excitement of getting to be someone else for a while leading a sort of double life. It’s like getting a chance to be someone and do something that you’re not. Who wouldn’t like the opportunity to see how that fits? Of course who wants to take with it the possibility of getting killed?

Short Cut Movie Review - Half Nelson

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden adapted this story of a drug addicted public school teacher in the inner city from a short film they made two years earlier. Ryan Gosling was Oscar-nominated for playing the middle school teacher and girls basketball coach whose student discovers his secret addiction. Fleck directs entirely with handheld cameras, sticking true to the typical cinema verite style that so many gritty urban dramas employ. The young Shareeka Epps is a standout as the sensible and quiet Drey, who is essentially alone and in desperate need of an adult role model with an older brother in prison and a mother who works double shifts as an EMT. Gosling and a local drug dealer name Frank (Anthony Mackie) vie to be that role model. Neither is particularly well-suited to the job and the movie does either a sly or an irresponsible thing in making us hope Drey steers clear of Frank in favor of her teacher.

Fleck is much less interested in the perils of addition than he is in the moral quandary of a white drug addict thinking he’s a better mentor for a child than a dealer. Unfortunately he doesn’t know quite where to take the story or how to end it convincingly. Drug addicts don’t often arrive at happy endings, and when they do it takes a lot more time than Fleck devotes to it.

Savages Movie Review

Oliver Stone returns to fine form with his latest example of pushing violence to excess in cinema with Savages, the film that Natural Born Killers might have been with a little restraint. Stone exhibits more control of a story that could very easily have run away from itself and of the violence depicted in it.

"That Was Fuckin' Trippy": Pulp Fiction Analysis Part X

Go to Part IX: "Is that what you'd call an uncomfortable silence?"

As Vincent speeds along the streets, taking Mia to Lance’s house, notice Tarantino no longer uses a process shot for the moving vehicle. He maintains realism throughout the overdose sequence. After Lance hangs up the phone and just as Vincent drives up onto the lawn, Tarantino switches to a hand-held camera for most of the scene. This gives an immediacy and sense of disorder to what’s going on.

Here, the lack of a process shot adds to the realism of the scene.

"I'll Be Down in Two Shakes of a Lamb's Tail.": Pulp Fiction Analysis Part VII

Go to Part VII: "It's a sex thing. It helps fellatio."

Vincent slowly ambles to the door of Mia’s (Uma Thurman) house, finding a note for him to come inside and make himself a drink. In the fade from the close up of the note to the interior of the house there is a flash of the same orange glow we saw from the briefcase. If there is a motif to be gleaned from this it may be related to Vincent’s comment to Jules during the foot massage discussion: “You play with fire, you get burned.” He was referring to Marsellus’s throwing Antwan off a balcony after allegedly giving Mia a foot massage. The kids who betrayed Marsellus by taking the case also played with fire and got burned. As Vincent enters Mia’s home, he is crossing a threshold into which he will consider straying away from loyalty.

The cross-fade from the note to the interior of Mia's house brings back the mysterious orange glow.

Cue Dusty Springfield singing “Son of a Preacher Man.” This scene doesn’t do a whole lot except to show Vincent high on heroin, illustrate Mia’s cocaine habit and keep us in suspense as the camera keeps us from seeing Mia’s face until…

We don't get to see Mia's face until the next shot.

Go to Part VIII: "This is Jack Rabbit Slim's."

"It's a Sex Thing. It Helps Fellatio": Pulp Fiction Analysis Part VI

Part V: "In the fifth your ass goes down."

Jodi with the 18 piercings.

Open on Jody (Rosanna Arquette) and Trudi discussing piercing while Vincent listens. He is then summoned inside by Lance (Eric Stoltz) to make a heroin deal. Because Lance is out of balloons he has to use a baggie to give Vincent his heroin. Usually heroin is sold in balloons while cocaine is in baggies. This will be important later.

Baggies of heroin.

The Fighter Movie Review: One Fights and the Other Boxes

That David O. Russell’s The Fighter is “based on a true story” is not what makes it so good. After all, everybody’s life is a true story, but the vast majority of them wouldn’t make even watchable movies. Anyway, “based on a true story” is always a misleading entry into a movie. No matter how much truth is in the screenplay (in this case the product of Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson), the writers always end up playing fast and loose with some story elements.

I can’t say how much of the story of brothers Micky Ward and Dicky Eklund, professional boxers from Lowell, Massachusetts, is true or not. But looking at Micky’s list of professional fights on Wikipedia, it’s clear that his late-stage successful career has been truncated for dramatic effect. Not that this matters much, but it serves to highlight how even a film as steeped in realism as this one can play with facts to enhance not only the dramatic power of the narrative, but to keep the plot within manageable constraints.

Mr. Nice Movie Review

Bernard Rose was present at the Seville European Film Festival earlier this month presenting his film, Mr. Nice. He comes across like Peter Sellers as Clare Quilty in Stnaley Kubrick’s Lolita, not only by his physical appearance with thick black hair and slight stature, but also in his speaking style and mannerisms, including his frequent adjustment of his horn rimmed glasses.


He introduced his film by prefacing it with his view that drugs should be legal and that people shouldn’t have to languish in prison for years because they take drugs recreationally. He also made sure to draw a distinction between what he considers to be two separate issues: the question of legality on the one hand and of addiction on the other. Any reasonable person should have no trouble agreeing to that, but Rose’s film fails to adequately address the second.