Archive
Hammer and Thump
Posts by Locke Peterseim
From 2000 to 2005, Swiss endurance athlete Serge Roetheli and his wife Nicole traveled 25,000 miles around the world, from Europe, down around Africa, across the Middle East and South Asia, through East Asia and Australia, then over to South America and up into North America before finishing up back in Europe. The catch? Serge [...]
Read MoreDocumentarian Alex Gibney has made a name for himself by examining the murky morality of our leaders and institutions, such as the Bush Administration’s war in Iraq (2007′s Taxi to the Dark Side), the scandals that brought down political figures (2010′s Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer and Casino Jack and the [...]
Read More(Don’t complain about the title – I came this close to using “I Just Flew in from Asgard and Boy are My Arms Thor!” Consider yourselves lucky.) When you stop and think about it, little about Thor the Comic-book Superhero makes sense. (By that I mean little about Thor the character makes sense—nothing at all [...]
Read MoreBrothers Alan and Gabe Polsky made their mark in 2009 producing Werner Herzog and Nicholas Cage’s fairly awesome (and I’m so not kidding about that) Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. But what the brothers really wanted to do was direct, and this month brings to theaters and VOD their directorial debut The Motel [...]
Read MoreI was struggling a bit with my reactions to the new film adaptation of Ender’s Game. No, not because of the loud, kinda silly, kinda self-righteous, kinda deserved finger wagging and soap-boxing about novel author Orson Scott Card’s outspoken anti-gay brain vomitings. (To be clear, Card’s views on marriage equality are Mormon-dumb and deserve derision [...]
Read MoreThe historical drama Wolfskinder is set in East Prussia (present-day northern Poland) in 1946. The film by first-time feature writer-director Rick Ostermann follows fictional orphaned brothers Hans (13-year-old Levin Liam) and Fritz (10-year-old Patrick Lorenczat) as they and other children struggle to survive in the wilderness. But while fictional, Wolfskinder is based on the real-life [...]
Read MoreIn the atmospheric horror film We Are What We Are, a small family in upstate rural New York town struggles to maintain their private religious tradition. Mild Spoiler Alert: They’re cannibals, their modern-day practice rooted in a devout, strict mixture of Biblical faith and frontier survivalism that became tradition. Though the Parkers–including a stern father (Bill Sage) and his [...]
Read MoreOver the course of this weekend, the next few weeks, and yes all through this year’s awards season, you’re going to hear a lot about how stunning and brilliant is director Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity. Honestly, you’re going to be hearing that steadily for the next 20 to 40 years. There’s no doubt this film—a staggering [...]
Read MoreThe new Oscar-bait thriller Prisoners is very well done for the most part, earning enough points with its tightly crafted, nuanced first half to buy its way through a final act that quickly fills up with genre short cuts and over-cooked “this is the work of a crazy person!” tomfoolery. It has plenty of nice, [...]
Read MoreHere’s a truth about science fiction and fantasy fans, myself sometimes included: Even though our beloved genres are purportedly “forward-thinking” and/or “open to flights of limitless imagination,” the majority of these fans–these passionately vocal fan boys and fan girls–tend, like most other human beings, to gravitate toward the familiar, to what they know best and [...]
Read MoreFor almost a decade, Detroit-born, Chicago-based film maker Joe Swanberg has been one of the leading figures in the micro-budget, naturalistic “mumblecore” film “movement.” (Though Swanberg and everyone else working in that loose sub-genre–including the Duplass Brothers, Lynn Sheldon, Andrew Bujalski, and Lena Dunham–have always been loathe to embrace the label “mumblecore” or even the [...]
Read MoreI was worried that Kick-Ass 2 might come somewhere close to the subversive fun, aesthetic coolness, and philosophically deranged comic-book glee of the first Kick-Ass movie in 2010. You see, all this year I’ve been struggling with gun violence in new mainstream cinema and my attitude toward it. I’m not going to get into all [...]
Read MoreThe first Steve Jobs biopic, Jobs, stars a terrific Ashton Kutcher as the late, mercurial, sometimes unknowable Apple Computer co-founder and visionary genius. Directed by Joshua Michael Stern (Swing Vote), the film co-stars Josh Gad (The Book of Mormon, Love and Other Drugs, 1600 Penn) as Jobs’ one-time partner Steve “Woz” Wozniak. The film follows [...]
Read MoreActress Lake Bell’s career in film and television has followed a familiar “outsider” arc. Some may recognize her from various “that girl” character-actor roles, often as the quirky-sexy “best friend” in rom-coms like What Happens in Vegas, It’s Complicated, and No Strings Attached, or from TV shows like Boston Practice and Boston Legal. Meanwhile, fans [...]
Read MoreIn recent years, writer-director David Gordon Green’s become known for big, profane, anarchic and silly R-rated comedies like Pineapple Express (2008), The Sitter (2011), and Your Highness (2011), starring folks like Seth Rogen, James Franco, Danny McBride, and Jonah Hill. But amid all the pot jokes and groin punches, it’s easy to forget that prior [...]
Read MoreUs older sci-fi fans are always bitchin’ and moanin’ about how no one makes science fiction movies about ideas anymore. How it’s all just special effects and big stars and non-stop action. Which is why fan-boys and –girls of a certain age got very excited (probably too excited) about South African writer-director Neill Blomkamp’s debut [...]
Read MoreI can’t recall a movie that–for better or worse–comes so exactly as advertised as Pacific Rim does. If you’ve been looking at the summer marketing and thinking, “Good lord, that looks head-slappingly stupid,” you are correct. Likewise, if you’ve been watching the commercials and thinking, “Ho-lee crap, this looks mess-my-pants awesome,” you are also correct. [...]
Read MoreSo, The Lone Ranger, yeah… Pirates of the Old West… Johnny Depp, Buster Keaton, old-age make up… and so forth… a mystic loon with a dead bird on head, etc… Armie Hammer, “what’s with the mask?”, yes, that’s his real name and his real jaw… blah blah… ‘30s radio show, ‘50s TV show, Clayton Moore, [...]
Read MoreFans of “coming of age” films, like myself, know there are several subsets within the genre. For example, I’ve always been partial to the “British Prep School Coming of Age Film” (of which I guess in many ways the Harry Potter films are a very long, goofy entry. There’s a thesis for future essay: “Harry [...]
Read MoreForget the whole 3D added-value deal–for the price of a single World War Z movie ticket you get at least three movies in one: World War Z Film One–The Book Adaptation: The first World War Z is the book lover’s worse nightmare: a complete and total failure to capture even a fraction of the rich, dark pleasures [...]
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