American remakes of foreign films… I occasionally struggle to understand the motivation behind the genre. Obviously, classics like The Magnificent Seven (a remake of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai) hold up on their own and justify themselves by situating themselves as separate artistic entities, with certain changes demanded by the cultural differences and shift in setting, basically…
Inherent Vice (2014) Did you see the trailer to this movie? If not, please do; I’ve posted it below. If you have already seen it, then you know it warrants multiple views: this is a prime trailer. I plan on discussing it a fair amount in this article, so you should probably watch it. The…
I don’t mean to toot my own horn or anything like that, but I do say with no small amount of smugness that my predictions are better than anyone else’s. Am I perhaps being a wee bit arrogant, considering that I base that statement on only the fact that I predicted last year’s Academy Awards…
Ah, it’s that time again: Time for a somewhat obligatory Top 10 list. I know it’s late, posted mid-February and only a week before the Oscars, but I must confess, I nearly didn’t do a list this year. I know, shocking. What would you have done? Where would you have been? Without a Top 10…
Poor Oscar Isaac. “What do you mean, Second Breakfast Guy? Oscar Isaac has a great career just kicking off. He’s worked with some amazingly talented people like Nicholas Winding Refn and the Coen Brothers, and he has a starring role in the upcoming Star Wars movie. What do you mean, ‘Poor Oscar Isaac’?” A lot…
I have now seen every Best Picture nominee this year, and can rest easy knowing that Rooster Illusion has reviews of all eight of them posted and ready for our devoted and adoring audience. With that behind me, I can get back to my one true passion: watching movies that are actually good. That’s not…
This week I continue to punish myself with biopics. They’re a tricky business, and can be incredibly good, but I feel like the mentality pulsating through Hollywood these past few years and on to the coming few is something along the lines of, “Everyone should have a movie made about them. Why are we wasting…
