REVIEW: Margin Call [2011]

“It’s a long way down” When most people think about Wall Street movies they usually conjure images of the financial center’s eponymous Oliver Stone flick or something like Boiler Room showing the fast life and high rewards achieved by twenty-somethings pushing numbers around a computer screen. We think glamorous lifestyles and the stench of arrogance as money-hungry men in suits fleece the common man to make a percentage off their nest egg’s devastating losses. It’s high stakes poker on a grand scale relying on men with ulterior motives to give…

Read More

REVIEW: The Slammin’ Salmon [2009]

“Feed my pretties—Feed!” Those Broken Lizard boys had quite the run. After needing to visit colleges for screenings of their debut Puddle Cruiser, the comedy troupe struck it big with Super Troopers, in effect giving them free reign to see both follow-ups have their day in multiplexes, albeit to low returns. As a result—Club Dread is admittedly weak, but Beerfest found some of that magic from their Trooper days—the new flick wasn’t given a wide release, instead relegated to DVD and the hopes word of mouth and fan base will…

Read More

REVIEW: 無間道 [Infernal Affairs] vs. The Departed [2002 & 2006]

“I can’t finish the novel, I don’t know whether he’s good or bad” This is a question posed to Andy Lau’s character, by his live-in girlfriend, in the brilliant Cantonese film 無間道 [Infernal Affairs]. She is a writer plodding through the plot of her new novel, which eerily mirrors the double life lived by her significant other. A small detail like this helped create characters that live and breathe with a history behind them. Unfortunately, while adding almost an hour of length, Martin Scorsese’s new remake, The Departed, fails to…

Read More