California Literary Review

Articles written for the California Literary Review:

• Movie Review: Albert Nobbs
  Posted on 28 Jan 2012 in Movies, Movies & TV
  

  Albert, says Garcia, is “beyond the closet.” It doesn’t matter what his sexual orientation is (or isn’t), nor does it even particularly matter his gender. In the end, he’s just a human being striving to be happy, and we can identify with that.

• Movie Review: The Devil Inside
  Posted on 07 Jan 2012 in Movies, Movies & TV
  

  With a jarringly abrupt termination that is less a conclusion than an obnoxious cliffhanger, we’re given a website to visit to continue following “the Rossi case.” Boos reverberate through the theater. “Come on, you wanted to see this too!” says a boy to his girlfriend as they exit.

• The Walking Dead Recap: Pretty Much Dead Already (Season 2, Episode 7)
  Posted on 29 Nov 2011 in Television, The Fourth Wall, Thrillers
  

  So far in this season of The Walking Dead, the writers can’t seem to figure out what to do with the characters, and in the interest of prolonging a suspenseful plot point (Sophia’s disappearance) they let the protagonists dig their own graves with us discontented viewers. Look, I get it: these people are barely surviving [...]

• The Walking Dead Recap: Secrets (Season 2, Episode 6)
  Posted on 21 Nov 2011 in Television, The Fourth Wall, Thrillers
  

  The name of this episode, which marks the middle point of season 2, should be “Open Secrets.” In last week’s “Chupacabra,” AMC poked us awake – prodded us into caring after the first half of the season put us to sleep. (The heated comments on my snarky review of last week’s episode bear witness to [...]

• Movie Review: The Descendants
  Posted on 19 Nov 2011 in Movies, Movies & TV
  

  Payne is best at depicting the niggling, cringe-worthy flaws of your average Joe. His movies are smart depictions of normal people thrust into bizarre situations – but softly strange, not so farfetched as to be impossible. Like The Squid and the Whale’s Noah Baumbach, Payne chooses topics that are grotesque, darkly comic. You laugh because you can’t figure out what else to do with yourself.

• Movie Review: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1
  Posted on 19 Nov 2011 in Movies, Movies & TV
  

  So when the thing decides it’s coming, ready or not, it actually eats Bella from the inside out. And – get this – Edward has to bite her body all over to turn her into a vampire before she dies of massive hemorrhaging. What is actually a really brutal birth scene in the book translates quite well to a PG-13 format with some smart editing and fuzzy filters.

• The Walking Dead Recap: Chupacabra (Season 2, Episode 5)
  Posted on 14 Nov 2011 in Television, The Fourth Wall, Thrillers
  

  Following last week’s romantic gestures, last night’s episode of The Walking Dead treated us to some frustrating reversion. Shane won’t quit harping on his duty to Lori and Carl; Andrea manages to take one step forward and two steps back. We finally get another dose of Merle’s vicious hatred (though not in the way you’d [...]

• The Walking Dead Recap: Cherokee Rose (Season 2, Episode 4)
  Posted on 07 Nov 2011 in Television, The Fourth Wall, Thrillers
  

  Three long episodes ago, Carl got shot and Sophia went missing. It’s only now, a third of the way through the season, that we’re beginning to think the kids might actually be all right. With Hershel’s help and at the expense of Otis’s life and Shane’s sanity (which to be fair was already slipping), Carl [...]

• The Walking Dead Recap: Save the Last One (Season 2, Episode 3)
  Posted on 31 Oct 2011 in Television, The Fourth Wall
  

  The opening of last night’s episode of “The Walking Dead” fed us a familiar trope. Travis Bickle. Britney Spears, pre-umbrella-incident. Shane dragging an electric razor over his cranium while steam wafts around his muscular nakedness. Someone shaving his head with that kind of frightening intensity is not someone we want to befriend – or in [...]

• The Walking Dead Recap: “Bloodletting” (Season 2, Episode 2)
  Posted on 24 Oct 2011 in Television, The Fourth Wall
  

  In its first season, “The Walking Dead” was like a gore-streaked helium balloon that began firmly tethered to its source material and started to float off into the ether about halfway through. Now, it appears, someone is yanking its string.

• The Walking Dead Season 2 Premiere: Suffer the Little Children
  Posted on 17 Oct 2011 in Television, The Fourth Wall, Thrillers
  

  Officers Friendly and Crazy to the rescue. (Photo credit: Gene Page/AMC) Despite the fact that AMC’s “The Walking Dead” drew larger numbers of viewers in its first season than the channel’s frontrunner “Mad Men,” the channel allegedly fired creator Frank Darabont and drastically slashed the show’s budget, even while stretching out this season’s length from [...]

• Movie Review: The Thing
  Posted on 15 Oct 2011 in Movies, Movies & TV
  

  Detractors of Rob Zombie’s Halloween know that the cardinal rule of a classic monster is this: don’t reveal too much. In the same way Michael Myers was a far spookier fiend when he hid behind the impassive mask, tilting his head in fascination at his kills, the alien in The Thing was wholly horrifying when it was an unknown life form. When Zombie strove to tell us the story of how Michael Myers became a monster, we quit listening. Unfortunately, van Heijningen falls into the same trap with his prequel.

• The Weekly Listicle: From the Mouths of Babes…Kids and the Supernatural
  Posted on 25 Aug 2011 in Movies, The Fourth Wall
  

  This weekend’s Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (which I saw at a film festival last fall and didn’t enjoy, much to my chagrin) is the latest in a series of flicks Guillermo Del Toro has executively produced. Del Toro has his fingers in movies all across the spectrum – but it seems his favorite [...]

• Movie Review: Fright Night
  Posted on 20 Aug 2011 in Movies, Movies & TV
  

  Discerning “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” fans will have noticed Fright Night’s screenplay is written by Marti Noxon, who penned some of the best episodes of the WB show. Who better to take on a screenplay about a solo teenager combating vampires? Noxon’s screenplay is witty, gory, and fast-paced. Cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe, who also did memorable work on The Others, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and The Road, made Vegas, a city of lights and constant motion, seem remarkably cold and foreboding.

• Movie Review: 30 Minutes or Less
  Posted on 13 Aug 2011 in Movies, Movies & TV
  

  If 30 Minutes or Less weren’t so bogged down with gratuitous cursing, violence, and boobs, it might’ve had the potential to be an American version of the brilliant Edgar Wright buddy-cop spoof Hot Fuzz. As is, it’s bound to go down in the annals of “meh” comedies. Transgressive material is only great when it’s done correctly, and 30 Minutes or Less gets it wrong.