Founder Rory Dean & Blogger @ Large Melissa K. Dean
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Category Archives: Movie Makers & Shakers
Gravity (2013)
Despite the overwhelming positivism, both in reviews and ratings and award show gold, “Gravity” suffers from the same nausea ad infinitum that often relegates it to little more than a snappily dressed carny barker inviting the wanderer to navigate the tent poles of what will become a scattered visit to theater of the absurd. Continue reading
Posted in Movie I've Seen, Movie Makers & Shakers, Movies You Should or Should Not See, My Review of Their Review:, On DVD, Online, philosophy and film, Rants & Raves
Tagged 2013, above the line, alfonso cuaron, asteroid movie, CGI space drama, children of men director, Christopher DeFaria, Dr. Ryan Stone, drama, ed harris, effects-driven storytelling, Emmanuel Lubezki, epic, Film, george cloooney, gravity, Jonás Cuarón, Mark Sanger, Mathew Arnold, Matt Kowalsky, movie review, practical movie reviews, rory dean, sandra bullock, sci-fi, shuttle, space, spacewalk
11 Comments
Concussion (2013)
Writer-Director Stacie Passon’s 2013 film “Concussion” masterfully crafts the complexity of inward glances to produce a quality of deafening silence that fills the screen with the unconveyable voracity of wounded hearts. Continue reading
Posted in Movie I've Seen, Movie Makers & Shakers, Movies You Should or Should Not See, My Review of Their Review:, On DVD, Online, philosophy and film, Rants & Raves
Tagged 2013, above the line, affluent suburban housewife, comfy mirrors of normalcy, concussion, David Kruta, identity crisis, Johnathan Tchaikovsky, Julie Fain Lawrence, lesbian bed death, LGBT films, maggie siff, malaise, mid lifer crisis, practical movie reviews, queer cinema, robin weigert, rory dean, Rose Troche, stacie passon
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Twixt (2011)
“Twixt” is about dead-end roads and the distracted ambition of the travelers we find there in a makeshift world about middle grounds between dreams and the indecision of lost souls. We are invitees to the inky interiors of Coppola’s own perplexed life and the accumulated imaginings of his career. The result, while rewarding to Coppola aficionados and otherworldly adventurists, “Twixt” succeeds in ways and means that are simply not for everyone. Continue reading
Posted in Movie I've Seen, Movie Makers & Shakers, Movies You Should or Should Not See, My Review of Their Review:, On DVD, Online, philosophy and film, Rants & Raves
Tagged 2011 movies, above the line, atmosphere of questions, Baudelaire, Coppola, dead-end roads, dream fueled, duncan jones, Edgar Allan Poe, Francis Ford Coppola ., horror, kevin smith, landscape of mirrors, lost souls, Poe-driven, practical movie reviews, psychological happenstance, red state, rory dean, the only cure is art., Twixt, Val Kilmer
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Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
Oliver Stone’s films live and breathe in the aether of happenstance and catastrophe, hand-wrung spaghetti noodles on the wall of Americana in Technicolor pasticcio, washed in controversy and teeming causticity. Driven by Stone’s familiar and articulate camera, his branded editing techniques and his signature bravado that makes heroes of all his criminal souls, Born on the 4th is quite easily among his best films. Continue reading
Posted in Blu-ray, Essays on art, Essays on Film, Movie I've Seen, Movie Makers & Shakers, philosophy and film
Tagged 4th of July is about community and the celebration of togetherness, above the line, aether of happenstance and catastrophe, born on the fourth of july, Character actor, condemnation and awe, everyday Americana of the 1960s, Film, hollywood, Independence Day (United States), oliver stone, practical movie reviews, rory dean, savages, specter of curiosity, Stone, Stone's driving passion and ability to weave together history and fantasy, Stone's most salient talent is to empower his broken characters with gut-level verisimilitude, tom cruise, war movies
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Above the Line 
The Triumphant Returns And Spectacular Failures of Blogging in Hollywoodland
Blogging for the people that read blogs about people retiring from the spotlight for ten minutes and then in a desperate thirst for one more headline slipping back as though they never quit at all is after all is said and done the greatest Everest known to us. Continue reading →