My first time watching this was ironically on the road in my hotel room at my first “work event” at the job I had when I graduated college. Just like our protagonist, Frank Bono, I was a stranger in a land unfamiliar to me to do a gig I was reluctant to do. Unlike Frank, though, I was in Houston for marketing and he finds himself in New York hired to kill a man. And that’s where the similarities between…

I have to go back and give it some thought, but I believe I am writing this review after my fifth viewing of “Man Bites Dog.” I first saw it on an old Criterion Collection DVD somewhere around 2006, the cover of a man firing off a revolver at an unseen target while a bloody pacifier flies through the air immediately catching my eye. Yes, “Man Bites Dog” is the kind of in-your-face flick that only erupts into existence from…

My first viewing of “No Country for Old Men” was actually an advanced screening I got tickets for at the local indie theater (RIP Angelika). At the time, I was dating a young a lady who found the film befuddling while I declared it the best movie of 2007 and was vindicated in that assessment months later when the Oscars did the same thing. I mention all of this because there are certain movies that arrive with a seismic impact…

For a film with the word “dirty” in the title, this one is frequently gorgeous. I don’t know if the majority of the budget in this went to aerial filming around the San Francisco area, but it would not surprise me if that was the case. It felt like every 15 minutes we got a shot from a helicopter zooming around the city or pulling back from a deserted football stadium and, look, I get it – when the weather…