Top Ten Films: 2015

“Inspired by the true stories of daring women.”

‘Hateful’ Dead: The Eighth-Best Film By Quentin Tarantino

I’m not a total Tarantino fanboy, because I’m not generally a fan of any filmmaker who keeps making different variations of the same movie. (I have this problem with Wes Anderson, too.) Some people just love a particular filmmaker’s obsessive patterns, and love returning to that same formula again and again. I don’t. After a […]

Male Enhancement: ‘XXL’ Doubles The Pleasure Of ‘Magic Mike’

If you’d told me before the fact that a movie about male strippers starring Matthew McConaughey and Channing Tatum would have been amongst my top five films of 2012, I may not have believed you, except for one key fact — the movie was directed by Steven Soderbergh, who tends to elevate could-be lowbrow material […]

Hard In The City’s “Best Of Google” Volume 3

Happy New Year! This little blog of mine has existed for a little over three years now, and you know what? The more I blog, the more I realize what ignorant freaks the human race can be, thanks to the magic of Google. Google has helped a handful of people find my blog for perfectly […]

The Gun Show: Tatum, Ruffalo & Carell Brawl In ‘Foxcatcher’

In its most extreme realizations, the American dream means being the best. Foxcatcher is about three men who already are the best, and want to be better.

Not-Oscars 2012: The Year’s Best Performances

(Originally published at JustinPlusSeven on January 10, 2013.) You, dear reader, have the honor of reading this in the future, after the Oscar nominations have been announced. But I am writing from this from the near past, before we know which five contenders are fighting it out in each category. Of course, some are shoo-ins; […]

Top Ten Films: 2012

It’s Oscar time! As usual, the Academy Awards are poised to make some very wrong decisions this year. So as usual, I am prematurely correcting them by releasing my Top Ten of the year. That year is 2012, of course — real film critics release such lists at the end of December or beginning of […]

Flip ‘Side’: Soderbergh Turns Genre On Its Head Again

Is Steven Soderbergh one of Hollywood’s least appreciated filmmakers? On the one hand, the man has achieved his share of success. He won an Oscar for Traffic, he helmed the commercially successful Ocean’s Eleven trilogy, and several of his earlier works are adored by critics — Out Of Sight perhaps most of all. The man […]

Tragic ‘Mike’: When Steven Soderbergh Rains Men, It Pours…

Whoever cut the first trailer for Magic Mike should be taken out back and shot. (I’ll bet a week’s worth of tips it wasn’t Steven Soderbergh himself.) Rihanna’s “We Found Love” playing over scenes of stripper Channing Tatum whining about how he really just wants to make furniture, causing some generic chick to fall for […]

Trailer Trash: ‘Magic Mike’

Bad news, you guys: We found Nicholas Sparks in a Steven Soderbergh place.

The Girlfight Experience: Gina Carano Goes ‘Haywire’

2011 is long gone — we’re a month into the new year, yet every movie I’ve seen this January is a 2011 release. By design. The studios always roll out way more movies than we could ever possibly see all at once, then let us scramble to catch them all in order to be caught […]