When I was 15 I met Wes Craven, the director of this film, just after he had filmed it in Haiti. I didn’t realize then how truly chaotic the country must have been. The story takes place during the build-up to the flight of president Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986. Almost as we watched, President Jean-Bertrand…

The idea of a Jewish kid so consumed with self-loathing that he becomes a neo-Nazi has potential, but runs into problems here. The characters’ motivations and philosophies are too muddled to be believable. Ambiguity in a character is good, but eventually it has to be explained.

I feel like nothing I say will be worthy of this film. The was some kind of amazing confluence of talent and circumstance that made this movie greater than the sum of its parts. It’s stunning. I’ll risk one bit of commentary. The circus freak is a fundamental human archetype. To use it cheaply or…

Several things surprised me about this movie. Ann and I both wanted to see a James Dean movie, because he is still so glamorized by our culture. We had an idea of him being aloof and cool, which doesn’t describe his character in this movie at all. Here he’s sincere, well-meaning, loving, and sensitive in…

For the amount of self-reference packed into this movie, it’s surprisingly easy to follow. So it would be a little misleading to say it’s the story of the script writer writing himself into the script, because it all seems pretty natural as you watch it. It does come close to getting too twisted up near…

James Bond spoof? Ninety-minute Cooper Mini ad? It doesn’t really matter, it’s fun and funny. One thing it makes clear: while dashing male protagonists and Cooper Mini’s have not changed much, the computers in the story are almost unrecognizable.

This is the only prisoner of war story I’ve read that’s made me jealous of the prisoners. Definitely not because POW life is romanticized, but because these prisoners set out on such an outrageous undertaking to make to most of it. There is an escape, which is always exciting, but this is the only story…

We almost quit watching this movie a few times because it gets so stupid, but then it would suddenly get very funny and reel us back in. There’s some really lousy acting, and the film is almost play-like in it’s sparseness of soundtrack and other distractions from the actors, so bad acting hurts. But Alan…

Another story that, like All Quiet on the Western Front, illustrates that if you are going to be at all critical of World War II, your characters must be Germans. Even if they all speak English and rebel only against the war itself and not against Nazism. This story examines a character who hates the…

This is a satire of American culture. At its best, it exposes some of our cliches, gets some laughs, and hints at where they might have come from. At its worst, it is a collection of cheap shots at poorly acted stereotypical characters.