Red River

There was never any real competition for the best western star of all time. There was John Wayne, and there was everybody else. He made a lot of potboilers early in his career, before he became a real star, but after that I can’t think of a really bad one. Many of the ones he made with John Ford are classics, some of the best movies ever made in any genre.

This was actually filmed ... Read more »

Red Road

Sort of a combination of Rear Window, Vertigo, and Lars von Trier. The first one for the voyeurism, the second for the obsession, and Lars for the bullshit. The writer/director, Andrea Arnold, won a Best Live Action Short Oscar for “Wasp.” This is her first feature film, and it won the Jury Prize at Cannes. She is loosely associated with the Dogme 95 movement ... Read more »

The Red Shoes

In A Chorus Line Val (“Dance: Ten; Looks: Three”) has this to say: “Oh, yeah, let’s get one thing straight. See, I never heard about The Red Shoes, I never saw The Red Shoes, I didn’t give a fuck about The Red Shoes.” For some reason, that ... Read more »

Red Son

Here’s an interesting concept: Suppose the little rocket ship from Krypton carrying the infant Kal-El/Clark Kent/Superman had not landed somewhere in the American Midwest, but on the Smallski Collective Farm in the USSR? Would he still stand for Truth, Justice, and the American Way?

… Wait a minute, this is sounding a little familiar … now where’s that book? … ah ha! Here it is: ... Read more »

Red Tails

Did you know:

That with only two strafing runs from a single P-51 Mustang with six 50-caliber cannons, it is possible to blow up a German destroyer and send it to the bottom?

That it’s possible to be drenched in fuel, crash your plane which then explodes in a fireball, and escape with only 60% of your body burned?

That rookie pilots flying ... Read more »

Reds

When it is good, it is very, very good, but when it is bad … it’s not horrid, exactly. But it can be damn slow. Warren Beatty is one of those obsessed, perfectionist directors who can demand literally a hundred takes. During the filming of this one, when Beatty was about to order the 101st take of a simple scene, Gene Hackman said fuck this, and walked out. And ... Read more »

Reefer Madness

Not the 1938 bit of cult idiocy—which, I learn, was actually titled Tell Your Children in its original release—but the 2005 Showtime version of the Broadway musical. It premiered last night, and will surely be released on DVD one of these days. It is loosely based on the movie … at least, I think so, though I only suffered through that once, a long time ... Read more »

The Ref

This one ranks up there with National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and A Christmas Story as one of our favorite holiday movies. Denis Leary is fleeing a botched jewel robbery with a bite taken out of his ass by a guard dog, smelling of cat piss from another anti-burglar device, and is forced to take a couple hostage in their upscale ... Read more »

Religulous

If you watch Bill Maher’s show on HBO, this will remind you of it, a bit. It’s mostly Bill interviewing people and then talking. He chooses some of the most lunatic of the religious fringe, tosses in a couple of thoughtful people (that is, people that agree with him—and me—about religion, mostly), and then sums it all up at the end with an editorial. And I agree with absolutely everything ... Read more »