CONTENTS



WORK


SCIENCE AND MEDICINE


POLITICS


RELIGION


TRUE STORIES


MADE UP STORIES


EATING


FILM

IN THEATERS

The Edge of Heaven
X-Files: I Want to Believe
Wall-E
The Dark Knight
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Hancock
Mister Lonely
Wanted
The Children of Huang Shi
The Happening
The Fall
The Visitor
Then She Found Me
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Redbelt
Iron Man
Snow Angels
Married Life
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day


AT HOME

Smart People
Doomsday
Shutter
The Bank Job
Stop-Loss
The Ruins
Vantage Point
In Bruges
Under the Same Moon
Jumper
Funny Games
Cassandra's Dream
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Untraceable
I'm Not There
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Charlie Wilson's War
The Golden Compass
The Orphanage
One Missed Call
The Savages
Cloverfield
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Juno
Lions for Lambs
There Will Be Blood
Enchanted
Love In the Time of Cholera
I Am Legend
August Rush
Atonement
Hitman
Dan In Real Life
Things We Lost In The Fire
No Country for Old Men
Margot at the Wedding
American Gangster
Michael Clayton
In The Valley of Elah


JOHNWSTILES


Essays

Bubbles, Smoke and Mirrors 07.15.08

I went out to say hello to George this afternoon. He was cutting the grass in front of the office. He shut down his mower, pulled off his gloves, we shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. He asked me what in the world was happening with the banks. George was born just after the Depression, has worked his entire life, and, like most of us, continues to struggle while being deeply concerned about our financial future. George is frightened.

Earlier this week, Michael, our systems engineer, and I were discussing a customer's ceaseless restructuring and the impact it was having on their service and ability to meet customer demand. I suggested there were more important things this customer should be concerned with than auto responders to inventory queries. Yeah, he said, like global financial collapse. Michael is resigned.

On a Sunday afternoon last March, the Federal Reserve... more

Can't Talk About It 07.12.08

I knew a fellow once who came of age in a Germany led by Nazis. In the Hitler Youth and, when I knew him, a passionate liberal. He once suggested a walk after dinner and I asked walk to where? Just a walk John, he said, we will walk around for a while. Americans, he muttered as an aside. Very funny fellow. more


Films In Current Release

The The Edge of Heaven 08.31.08 ticket ticket ticket

When a character in a film asks, "to what shall we drink" and is answered "death," I worry that Išve stumbled into an Ingmar Bergman revival. I had intended to see...more


The X-Files: I Want to Believe 07.26.08 ticket

I don't want to believe the target audience for this film is real. I want to believe that the enigmatic Chris Carter and his writing buddy Frank Spotnitz weren't writing to a specific demographic. The bad guys in this film include a...more


Wall-E 07.23.08 ticket ticket

Of the two stories told in Pixar's latest, one is interesting and one is silly. Wall-E opens with a long shot from outer space tracking to the surface of Earth. On the way in we see a haze surrounding the planet that turns out to be reams of space junk, discarded satellites, little bits of metal. On the surface all that moves is a...more


The Dark Knight 07.19.08 ticket ticket ticket

A few years back a friend asked me to install some sort of ranking system for films. I'm not sure if that was because she didn't want to waste time reading about bad films or if when she read some reviews she couldn't tell if I liked the film or not. As I am often conflicted... more


Hellboy II: The Golden Army 07.14.08 ticket ticket ticket

During the summer of my sixth year I awoke half a dozen times in the middle of the night with a fever of 104 or so. The doctor, also awakened in the middle of the night, had my parents pull out all the stops to get the fever down. Pneumonia would be preferable, they were told, so I was dipped into an ice bath. Twenty years later I read a Time Magazine article associating earlier than actuarial death from natural causes with high fevers... more


Hancock 07.07.08 ticket ticket

Almost impossible these days to avoid film characters from comic books, graphic novels, even toys. Ken and Barbie are supposedly in negotiations with Jerry Bruckheimer for a Christmas release of their honeymoon extravaganza. Imagine my surprise... more


Mister Lonely 07.07.08ticketticket ticket

What is it about film that makes us demand clarity and narrative cohesion? We make no such demands of painting. Or poetry, or music. Goya's The Third of May stands as a masterpiece without the accompanying narrative detailing Marshall Murat's directive to round up and shoot all those guilty of protesting the French occupation of Spain. Or the awful irony of the slaughter... more


Wanted 07.05.08ticketticket

As I told the friend who accompanied me, these films have a built in defense. The moment you start picking apart any of the huge number of inconsistencies in the story, like why did we get a close-up of the evidence of his best friend cuckolding him, or does any variety of loom produce coded versions of fate... more


The Children of Huang Shi 06.20.08ticketticket

What the Japanese did at Nanking in 1939 defies belief. I read an account of the ordeal a few months back and was depressed for weeks. Using it as a backdrop for a story of heroism and sacrifice reminded me of Vonnegut's use of Dresden as the backdrop for Slaughterhouse Five. Certainly we all somehow benefit from knowing the depth of depravity to which we are... more


The Happening 06.13.08ticketticket

Sadly, M. Night Shyamalan's latest scary movie will likely suffer from its pro environment theme. His first R rated film, it is filled with graphic images of people succumbing to some mysterious pathogen that appears to cause self-destructive impulses... more



Films On DVD

Smart People 04.11.08ticketticket

Everyone but Thomas Haden Church appeared to be playing against type. Ellen Page was a buttoned-up Republican, Dennis Quaid a pot-bellied elitist, and... more


Doomsday 03.15.08ticket ticket

I hope no one I know saw me seeing this one. When I read it borrowed heavily from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome I almost didn't go. But I did. Almost walked out when the car chase started but I didn't. Note please the other titles penned by writer/director Neil Marshall - The Descent, Dog Soldiers, Combat,... more


The Bank Job 03.18.08ticket ticket

When Martine (Saffron Burrows) approaches Terry Leather (Jason Statham) with a plan to rob a major London bank, Terry is taken aback. We may be known for the occasional skullduggery, he says, but rob a bank? Skullduggery?... more


Stop-Loss 04.05.08ticketticket

Only about one in five American soldiers would fire their weapons directly at Axis soldiers during World War II. That percentage rose little during Korea and Vietnam. The military needed to come to grips with their charge's profound reluctance to take life. They did. Something close to ninety percent of our soldiers will now pull the trigger. It takes some pretty intense training to overcome this primal... more


In Bruges 04.29.08 ticketticket

If you've been to the theater in the past two months or watch a lot of TV you've seen ads for In Bruges. Ralph Feinnes (Harry) smashing a phone to bits, Colin Farrell (Ray) remarking on how boring Bruges is or telling some overweights they can't make it up the windy stairs, or a cute hotel proprietor telling the boys they must be crazy. Looks like one madcap movie, packed with laughs. You may not have seen the scene where Ray accidentally puts a bullet... more


Under the Same Moon 03.28.08ticketticketticket

For reasons I don't fully understand we have become a nation of immigrants fearful of immigrants. more


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