Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining

After watching Room 237 I felt I needed to watch The Shining again, since it’s been a while. My first impression was that it really, really looks like a movie made in the 1970s-and not in a good way.  While I liked Jack Nicholson and Scatman Crothers, I have never understood the popularity of Shelley Duvall.  And that kid who played Danny, well, the fact that he only has one other acting credit says all that needs to be said about his skills. Of course, the real star of The Shining was it’s Director, Stanley Kubrick.  Long shots and panning…

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The Master

A few years back Joaquin Phoenix went on the Late Show with David Letterman to tell the world that he was done with acting.  He looked like a cross between a homeless man and an insane prophet.  He acted completely nuts and followed this performance by not acting for several years.  So it is kind of appropriate that his first film in many years sees him playing a madman. The Master is the story of a shell shocked sailor who spends most of his spare time mixing poisonous chemicals into intoxicating beverages.  The ingredients for his concoctions include paint thinner,…

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Water for Elephants

The story of a college dropout who falls in love with a married woman.  The only trouble is that her husband happens to be a homicidal maniac. He gets away with constant murder by running a circus that is always on the move. Water for Elephants is a so over the top that I found myself waiting for the clichéd ending a good thirty minutes before it happened.  The madman/ring master abuses his wife, kicks dogs, beats an elephant bloody, murders countless people, and yet no one ever even thinks of trying to stop him or reporting him to local…

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Endgame by Frank Brady

Bobby Fischer was possibly the greatest chess player who ever lived.  Unfortunately, he was also as mad as a hatter. Endgame tells the story of Bobby Fischer from the moment he is a small child with a cheap department store chess set until he is a frozen corpse in Iceland being dug up for a DNA test.  In between, he becomes an International Grandmaster, an obsessed religious fanatic, a diehard anti-Semite, anti-American, and all around world class asshole. I had heard of Bobby Fischer, but my main memories of him were as a slightly mad looking fellow with a large…

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