We have no idea yet if anyone from the Hesperia Star has won in this year’s Society of Professional Journalists awards (the ceremony won’t be until May 13 in Riverside), but anyone wanting to know now can check this thread regularly to see if any names have been added. So far, it looks like they’ve only judged the larger newspaper division.
Don’t go into The Ice Harvest
expecting Say Anything or even Grosse Pointe Blank — it’s not that kind of comedy and, honestly, calling it a comedy at all is probably setting up false expectations. Call it a film noir with gallows humor and you’re probably closer to the point, and ready for the slippery ride through Christmas Eve streets.
This is a darkly funny — of the more smiling, less laughing breed — crime story, in which the crime is complete almost before the opening credits are, and which follows the culprits trying to survive the next few hours until they can get away with it. There is a sense of quiet desperation to everything in the movie — including the life that this caper was supposed to take the cuplrits out of — that give the entire affair a certain underlying sense of despair.
Strong performances throughout, including the always-good Cusack, but also strong performances from Thornton, Platt and Quaid.
Recommended for that intersection of film-goers who both enjoy film noir and the novels of Carl Hiaasen.
If you expect A History of Violence to be a typical Hollywood mindless shoot-em-up, you’re going to be disappointed. But you might just be the audience that would get the most out of the film anyway.
David Cronenberg’s thriller is violent, but more important than the fight sequences are their consequences for Tom Stall and the characters, each of whom changes over the course of the film as a result of being part of it, or merely witnessing it.
The question of identity, both the one a person is born to and the one they create for themselves as an adult, is the other central theme, specifically the question of which is real. When faced with the revelation that she may not know the whole truth of who her husband is, Edie Stall has to figure out if she still loves her husband and how she feels about that realization.
The film does not wrap things up into a tidy little bow: Unlike most movies, the violence done in the film does not end in a satisfying way and we know that the consequences of what happened will continue, for all of the characters, for the rest of their lives.
A strongly recommended adult (in the true sense of the word) film.
You may not be able to fit into your lederhosen any more, but you don’t look a day over … hmm, whatever age you wish you looked, boss.
My left hand and both feet feel as though someone has drawn a razor across them, going from between my two middle fingers (or toes) down to the heel. The pain comes and goes, but at midday, I was hobbling and my left hand was a claw.
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