Why "Gears of War" and not "Super Mario Brothers"?

This reader mail from rogerebert.com:

"From Nathan Donarum:


Something has been bothering me recently. On my second viewing of "The Hurt Locker," I noticed a curious detail. There is a scene in which Eldridge plays a video game. The video game is "Gears of War," a hyper-masculine, adrenaline-pumped game about...well, war. 

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The Men Who Stare at Goats

By Jonathan Fisher, March 10th, 2010

Boy, where to begin with this movie? The Men Who Stare at Goats is an odd experience, perhaps because you're a little unsure about how much of it to believe. Sure, it claims that it's based on fact -- but did the U.S. Government really train soldiers in ESP, teaching them how to 'cloud-burst' and give people the 'sparkly-eye' (you don't want to know)?

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Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland

By Jonathan Fisher, March 7th, 2010

Tim Burton, I think, has gone through life misunderstood and underestimated. I was fortunate enough to see the Tim Burton gallery display at New York's Museum of Modern Art in December. One of the items on display was a short story he wrote as a fourteen-year-old for a school assignment, about a routine trip to the dentist turning into a nightmare. His teacher gave the story fifteen out of twenty and commented curtly, "use more dialogue." Just about every film critic, at one point or another, has made the same criticism of Tim Burton. Everyone acknowledges that he is a unique talent, a twisted visionary, a film-maker who truly understands the visual components of the cinematic experience. But his deficiencies have always been in his story-telling. He often comes under fire, from critics if not audiences, for being unable to express narrative in as confident a manner as contemporaries like Martin Scorsese or Paul Thomas Anderson.

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Who cares a lot?

By Jonathan Fisher, March 3rd, 2010

It's Oscar season again, and despite the usual cries of "the Academy is irrelevant!" and "the best movies never win!", critics around the world have begun filing their predictions, like clockwork. Like the cinematic sheep I am, it's time for me to follow suit. There have been a few changes this year to the Academy, the biggest one being the expansion of the Best Picture category from five to ten nominees, a knee-jerk reaction to the battering they received for snubbing The Dark Knight and Wall*E last year. I'm still rather sceptical about this move. Not that I think there can only be five "best" pictures in any given year, but more because the Academy will no doubt use this as an opportunity to give another few pity nominations. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, here are my Oscar predictions for this year's ceremony:

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Anyone feel like they've seen this before?

... Fuck you, internet. I still love Avatar.

The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker

By Jonathan Fisher, October 23rd, 2009

"Open the hurt locker, and learn how rough men come hunting for souls." -- Brian Turner, from his poem "The Hurt Locker"

The Hurt Locker has no axe to grind, pro or con, with the current Iraq war. The film opens with a quote by American war correspondent Chris Hedges: "The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug." Perhaps a tad obvious, and I'd like to think I would have worked that out for myself from the film that follows the quote, but the quote doesn't only apply to the people on the battlefield. War is a drug for humanity. We wage war over resources, over beliefs, for power. It has been said by many that if we lived in a world without religion, many of the great wars of our past would have been averted. Nonsense. If there was no religion, we would find other reasons to murder, maim, and attempt to control each other.

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Shutter Island

Shutter Island

By Jonathan Fisher, February 24th, 2010

Editor’s note: This review, while not containing explicit spoilers, hints at the resolution of Shutter Island. If you think you’re perceptive enough to guess the ending based on my intimations, I’d advise watching the movie before reading the review.

I guessed the ending of Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island about fifteen minutes into the film, but strangely enough that didn’t detract from my enjoyment of it. I had uncovered the ‘why’ of Shutter Island, but rather enjoyed Martin Scorsese revealing the ‘how’. From the first chimes of the film’s ominous score, and the first frame of the film’s opening credits, I knew what Scorsese was trying to do. Shutter Island harks back to the Hitchcock psychological thrillers of the 50s and 60s, which in turn were inspired by movies like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the first mind-bending thriller that flipped reality on the audience in a truly effective way. Once your mind begins to wander towards the possible ending of Shutter Island, it seems that there is no other way the movie could end… unless you’ve been duped by the film in the same way its protagonist has been duped by his surrounding characters.

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