New Jersey | the m0vie blog

Non-Review Review: Don Jon

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Darren

Don Jon is a confident directorial debut from actor and write Joseph Gordon Levitt. Levitt himself stars as the eponymous “Don”, a stereotypically macho young man from New Jersey, who splits his time between nightclubs, churches, the gym, his car and his pornography addiction. Written and directed by Levitt, Don Jon has a charming lightness that allows the movie to play with some pretty heavy subject matter. (After all, the last major film to explore sex addiction was Shame, which was as brilliant as it was harrowing.)

Don Jon is perhaps the sweetest movie ever made about porn addiction. A superb demonstration of Levitt’s already enviable talents, and a confident and slick feature film directorial debut.

Toast of the town…

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: anne hathaway, Channing Tatum, Cuba Gooding, Don Jon, DonJon, Jon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Julianne Moore, Levitt, List of directorial debuts, New Jersey, pornography, scarlett johansson, Sexual addiction | 7 Comments »

West Coast Avengers Omnibus, Vol. 1 (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on September 20, 2013 by Darren

To celebrate the release of Thor: The Dark World towards the end of next month, we’ll be looking at some Thor and Avenger-related comics throughout September. Check back weekly for the latest reviews and retrospectives.

I’ve never been especially fond of the classic Avengers. The group has always seemed particularly insular and self-centred for a comic book superhero team, with so much emphasis on their by-laws and regulations, their posh fifth avenue mansion and the strange sense of pride that second-tier characters like Hawkeye seem to place on their own importance within the Avengers franchise. There have been great runs, and there have been comics that I have enjoyed a great deal, but I will concede that I am not a fan of the Silver and Bronze Age Avengers aesthetic.

West Coast Avengers is a clear attempt to develop the franchise, to give Marvel a second high-profile Avengers book. Launched in 1984 and running for a decade, the book followed the establishment of a second superhero team branded on the classic Avengers model. Of course, part of me suspects that this was all just a plan to get Hawkeye out of the mansion (“you and Mockingbird can relocate quickly… and the sooner you do — the sooner our west coast team is operational — the better!” Vision insists).

There are moments of wry self-awareness in West Coast Avengers, but far too much of it reads far too earnestly.

And yet somehow this guy has appeared in two of the biggest superhero blockbusters of the past five years…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Al Milgrom, Avenger, avengers, captain america, david aja, dc comics, hawkeye, iron man, marvel comics, matt fraction, Mockingbird, New Jersey, stan lee, Thor: The Dark World, Tigra, ultron, West Coast Avengers | 9 Comments »

The Sopranos: I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano (Review)

Posted on July 18, 2013 by Darren

From pretty much the opening scene, I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano begins wrapping up loose ends with a ruthless efficiency. Jimmy, the rat identified in Nobody Knows Anything, is murdered less than five minutes into the episode. All the various plot threads seeded throughout the show’s first year come to a head. The feud between Junior and Tony is resolved. The FBI swoop in. Tony and Melfi talk it out and figure out exactly what their relationship is. Even Artie’s restaurant becomes a focal point, providing a direct link back to the very first episode.

For all the talk of randomness and inconsistency in The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti, everything here seems to come a full circle. It’s absolutely stunningly executed, and one of the best things that can be said about I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano (and one of the best things that could be said about any piece of television drama ever) is the fact that it feels so much deeper and richer than its runtime. We know that it’s an hour-long, but it really feels so much meatier and more substantial than that.

It’s a beautiful culmination to a year’s worth of television.

Lights out…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: amnesia, Carjacking, Carmela Soprano, David Chase, hbo, james gandolfini, Jennifer Melfi, Livia, Melfi, New Jersey, Nobody Knows Anything, Paulie, Soprano, Tony, Tony Soprano, United States | Leave a comment »

The Sopranos: Boca (Review)

Posted on July 4, 2013 by Darren

Boca pretty much interrupts a hot streak of first season Sopranos episodes. It serves as a reminder that the show might have brought the medium into the twenty-first century, serving as a massive influence on televisual storytelling over the past decade, but the first season was still a product of nineties television. Boca feels strangely like a stand-alone episode, a strange artefact from some parallel universe where David Chase and his team decided that The Sopranos might work just as well as a piece of episodic television, rather than as serialised narrative.

Boca feels like one of those “ripped from the headlines” issue-conscious pieces of television drama, as if we’re watching The Sopranos by way of Law & Order. Of course, the script still has the show’s wit, and the episode plays into the series’ themes, but Boca feels a little strange. It’s not a bad piece of television, but it’s the first episode of The Sopranos that feels like it could have been repurposed from something else.

Old love…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: Boca, Carmela Soprano, David Chase, hbo, james gandolfini, Mary Kay Letourneau, Meadow, Myocardial infarction, New Jersey, Silvio Dante, Soprano, Tony, Tony Soprano, United States | 2 Comments »

Tall Tales from a Lincoln Test Screening: Critiquing the Critics…

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Darren

Apparently there was a test screening of Lincoln in New Jersey. I know this because the film media has gone absolutely wild over it. What’s astonishing about this coverage is the fact that it’s less about how rare it is to test Spielberg movies (Hook was the last one tested, and we know how that turned out), but more about the perceived responses to audience comments coming from that screening. Critics and pundits were quick to dismiss audience members speaking out as “anonymous jackasses” or to question their critical faculties…

Which all seems a bit much, doesn’t it?

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Adam Berg, Anne Thompson, arts, david cronenberg, Ehren Kruger, film, film criticism, indieWire, Movie, New Jersey, rotten tomatoes, steven spielberg, Videodrome | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Posted on September 18, 2012 by Darren

The Manchurian Candidate is a rather wonderful piece of Cold War paranoia, with a handy bit of social commentary and a rather surrealist perspective thrown in on top. John Frankenheimer’s vision remains unnerving because of its occasionally absurd and strange imagery and subtext, much of which remains unsettling long after the end of the Cold War. While The Manchurian Candidate remains a fascinating story, and one which has seeped into pop cultural consciousness, It’s Frankenheimer’s direction that elevates the film, managing to convince the audience that there is some meaning and purpose to all the bizarre imagery and interactions.

Play your cards right…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Cold War, Eleanor, film, George Axelrod, John Frankenheimer, John Iselin, John Jay Iselin, Josie, Macy, Manchurian Candidate, McCarthyism, Movie, New Jersey, non-review review, Raymond, republicans, review, Russia, Soviet Union, United States, Yen Lo | Leave a comment »

The Sopranos: Down Neck (Review)

Posted on August 15, 2012 by Darren

I’ve said before (and many far smarter individuals have said it before me), but The Sopranos really feels like a novel for television. You can see that approach most distinctly in the first season, where David Chase cleverly structures the show that we spend more than half the season getting to know the cast, and getting comfortable with them, before things actually start happening in any truly meaningful sense. Of course, things have happened. The restaurant exploded, Junior and Tony nearly came to a head, but the approach has really been first and foremost about defining who these characters are, before we really get into what they do.

Down Neck, halfway through the first season, is really the perfect example. Not much really happens. Sure, plot threads advance. Livia discovers that her son is seeing a therapist. We hear that Junior is really settling into his new-found position of nominal authority. However, the most significant beats of Down Neck are concerned with character. A large portion of the episode is an extended flashback focusing on a dead character, and the rest sees the family dealing with the possible diagnosis of Anthony’s Attention Deficit Disorder. Hardly what one might have expected from the halfway point in the first season of a mob drama.

Family values…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: Anthony, Carmela, Chris, David Chase, Diegesis, Down Neck, FedEx, Gary Cooper, Janice, Jefferson, Jennifer Melfi, Junior, Junior Soprano, List of characters from The Sopranos – friends and family, Livia, Melfi, New Jersey, Soprano, Tony, Tony Award, Tony Soprano, United States | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Sleeper

Posted on June 14, 2012 by Darren

Sleeper is an enjoyable Woody Allen film, coming from relatively early in the director’s career. He had yet to direct either Annie Hall or Manhattan, arguably his two most popular works, but was coming off a string of well-regarded movies. Sleeper is an affectionate look at many of the science-fiction movies that Hollywood was producing in the late sixties and early seventies, to the point that Allen himself actually sat down with Isaac Asimov to make sure the science-fiction elements of the script were kosher. However, Sleeper is remarkably fluid, allowing room within that framework for Allen to really explore any and all ideas that might possibly have occurred to him. The result is, to borrow a quote from the poster, a highly enjoyable and almost whimsical “nostalgic look at the future.”

Robot in disguise…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Allen, Annie Hall, California, charlie chaplin, Diane Keaton, dianekeaton, film, Isaac Asimov, Manhattan, marlon brando, McDonalds, Movie, New Jersey, nixon, non-review review, president, review, richard nixon, Secret Service, Sleeper, United States, United States Secret Service, Watergate Scandal, white house, Woody Allen | Leave a comment »

The Sopranos: Pax Soprana (Review)

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Darren

I think it’s possible to make the argument that The Sopranos can be read as that illusive “great American novel”, just handily divided into eighty-six chapters and televised as opposed to written. Sure, it’s a show about the mob, but it’s also a compelling examination of the disillusionment festering at the heart of the American psyche. Tony might be a New Jersey mob boss, but most of his problems aren’t too far disconnected from those eating away at the American middle class. (Hell, I’d argue that it speaks volumes to the Irish psyche and probably many other nationalities as well.) As such, across the crucial first season, Chase and his team of writers seem to lay down and establish the core themes, allowing Tony to confront and explore just one of the many gnawing insecurities eating away at any middle-class father. In College, Tony wrestled with the idea that his daughter might discover who he truly is, while Pax Soprana explores the notion of impotence and insecurity – some times literally.