Desperado: My All-Time Favorite Guilty Pleasure
by GEOFF GEIB
Film critic Pauline Kael famously once wrote/said [1], “Movies are so rarely great art, that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested in them.” One man’s treasure is another man’s Indiana Jones and the One with the Alien Ending, and so in honor of all the great trash that has splashed movie screens through the ages, I will spend a few words on my all-time favorite guilty pleasure, Desperado. Read more 
Movie Review – Inception (2010) [Geoff Geib]
by GEOFF GEIB
Is it me or is Christopher Nolan finally starting to have fun? With a body of work now rivaling the best contemporary directors, it’s possible to take a step back and view his filmography as a whole, and early on especially, one does not find a pattern that would induce much in the way of a smile. Read more
Top Ten Films of 2008 by Geoff Geib
by GEOFF GEIB
2008 was the worst year I have spent at the movies in my adult life. This is partly the fault of Hollywood (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Happening, The Love Guru, 10,000 B.C., Prom Night to name just a few of the appallingly bad films of last year) but in complete and utter truthfulness, the fault is just as much mine. I simply didn’t get out to the movies with anywhere near the regularity I normally do, and as a result, I struggled to put together a ten best list. Since I agree with other posters on this site that context is important in these matters, I felt it was important to state as much at the outset. The following movies are all good, but in fairness, many of them would not normally make a ‘best of’ list, with the exception of the top three, which would grace any top ten list in any year. Read more
Movie Review – The Wrestler (2008)
by GEOFF GEIB
After the almost absurdly earnest The Fountain, Darren Aronofsky’s latest confection marks both a continuation of this most admirable filmmaking sensibility and a departure with a film where every character is blessed/cursed with a healthy dose of self awareness in a world that hardly rewards such a trait. Read more
Movie Review – The Reader (2008)
by GEOFF GEIB
The Reader is surprisingly moving considering the majority of its running time is spent as a stilted, excessively somber treatise on German complicity with the Nazi atrocities of the second world war. I’m all for an examination of cultural worth in the wake of the Holocaust, but I’m not sure it makes for the most engaging of Cineplex films, and The Reader consequently drags for a good portion of its talky running time. Read more
Movie Review – The Dark Knight (2008)
by GEOFF GEIB
Prepare yourself, gentle viewer, for The Dark Knight is very, very dark. Read more
Movie Review – Redbelt (2008)
by GEOFF GEIB
Oh, David Mamet, how I love your halting, sparse, profanity laden dialogue from a bygone age. It’s just so…well, it is what it is and indeed it is, and it’s just so f*#king nifty. Read more
Top Ten Films of 2007 by Geoff Geib
by GEOFF GEIB
1. Eastern Promises
The entire movie pulsates with an urgency and rage that belies its calm exterior and plays just a fraction under the surface. There is only so long before it will boil over and when it does, neither we nor the characters are truly prepared. Read more
Movie Review – Eastern Promises (2007)
by GEOFF GEIB
Fresh from the exhilarating A History of Violence, director David Cronenberg returns with a deceptively straightforward tale of the Russian mafia in London. The central preoccupation of the film is the transient nature of identity, a theme Cronenberg returns to time and again in his films. Read more
Movie Review – Shoot ‘Em Up (2007)
by GEOFF GEIB
This is a movie where the hero kills hundreds of people in a never-ending frenzy of bullets and carrots. I liked it. Read more
