Screening Log
This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.
January 2008 activity
Total Log Entries: 53
- Adam (8)
- Chet (0)
- Chiranjit (0)
- Cullen (0)
- David (12)
- Eva (2)
- Evan (0)
- Ian (4)
- Jenny (0)
- Katherine (0)
- Leo (2)
- Megan (0)
- Rumsey (12)
- Teddy (1)
- Thomas (2)
- Victoria (3)
Total Comments: 41
- Land of the Minotaur (0)
- Don’t Go in the Woods (0)
- Road House (0)
- There Will Be Blood (18)
- Vixen! (0)
- Cloverfield (0)
- Prisoners of the Lost Universe (0)
- Firing Line (0)
- Blue Skies (1)
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail (0)
- Wild at Heart (1)
- Gone Baby Gone (1)
- The Shop Around The Corner (0)
- La Vie En Rose (0)
- No Country For Old Men (0)
- Die Hard With A Vengeance (5)
- Coal Miner’s Daughter (0)
- Charlie Wilson’s War (0)
- Tenebre (0)
- Voodoo Black Exorcist (0)
- Death By Dialogue (0)
- WR: Mysteries of the Organism (0)
- Saved! (0)
- Thank You For Smoking (2)
- Wall Street (0)
- Dreamcatcher (1)
- Halloween (2)
- Fearless (0)
- Atonement (1)
- Youth Without Youth (0)
- Dans la Ville de Sylvia (0)
- Offside (3)
- Scoop (0)
- The Man From London (0)
- The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (0)
- RoboCop 3 (0)
- The Devil Wears Prada (0)
- For Your Consideration (0)
- Eraserhead (0)
- Prime Time (0)
- The Manipulator (0)
- Silent Night, Deadly Night (0)
- No Country For Old Men (0)
- Flash Gordon (0)
- I Am Legend (3)
- Week End (0)
- Southland Tales (0)
- No Country For Old Men (0)
- Wild Hogs (0)
- Futurama: Bender’s Big Score (0)
- Charlie Wilson’s War (3)
- Epic Movie (0)
- The Elephant Man (0)
Full Archive
Charlie Wilson’s War / USA / 2007
Take away Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s straight-talking sourpuss of a CIA agent—the one man who actually seems to know what his job is—and you have one of the blandest sociopolitical movies in memory. Sorkin’s screenplay is based almost entirely on American guilt—that we elect and reelect hedonistic idiots who do nothing, that we ignore anything and everything outside our borders, that we’re moral hypocrites. If all it takes for the morality of D.C. to kick on is a quick visit to hospital and refugee camps, shouldn’t we have sent half the House to Darfur by now?
Still, kudos to Sorkin and Nichols for the scene in which Wilson juggles Hoffman’s agent and a gaggle of busty young secretaries, then discoveries a bottle of wine has been tapped. Ingenious.
by Adam Balz | Source: 35MM Theatrical Print
02 Jan 2008 4:26 PM | Comments (3)
Chiranjit / 3 January 2008 / 2:08 PM / URL
I’m in complete agreement with you on Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s CIA agent and the scene involving the bottle of scotch. The character is really the highlight of the film. Honestly, I think my favorite performances by Hoffman are within films where it feels like Hoffman is disgusted to even be associated to the movie and just wants to get the hell off the set as soon as he’s finished reading his lines.
sdq / 5 January 2008 / 1:10 AM
thanks, chiranjit for correctly stating that it was SCOTCH that was tapped – generally speaking i agree w/mr balz but in this case i thought for the 1 hr 30 or so minutes the film was more tolerable than half the junk i sat through (many of which dragged way beyond the 2 hr mark) in 2007.
Adam B. / 5 January 2008 / 6:54 AM / URL
Sorry, my alcoholic repertoire is a little lacking. And I have to add that, for much of the film’s opening scenes, including Charlie Wilson in the hot-tub, it felt like The Graduate, Part II: Benjamin Braddock Goes to Washington. I don’t know for sure, but Mike Nichol seems to have a love of small, manufactured bodies of water.