November, 3rd, 2008
last updated September, 2nd, 2010

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Reviews

by Chris Sunami

Contents

1. BoMA
2. Boys of Life
3. Children of Men
4. Dhalgren
5. Kanye West's College Dropout
6. More
7. Not There
8. Roses
9. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
10. Smooth Criminal
11. Speakerboxx/The Love Below
12. Synecdoche, NY
13. The Incredibles
14. The Station Agent

1. BoMA

   
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2. Boys of Life

   WARNING! This review describes a book with extremely graphic adult content. Neither the book nor this review are intended for children.
   
   
   
   
   
   Paul Russell's "Boys of Life" is one of the most lyrically beautiful books I've ever read --a fact made all the more remarkable in consideration of the book's dark and disturbing them...
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3. Children of Men

   Children of Men is by far the best movie I’ve seen in recent years. I’ve been a fan of director Alfonso Cuarón since his "Y Tu Mama Tambien" but this film shows real advances in vision and artistry even since then. It’s a film I would unhesitatingly recommend to anyone who cares at all about humanity.
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4. Dhalgren

   I'm suprised that after reading all the other reviews, no one mentions how central race is to this book, especially given Delany's decision, as a black author, to deliberately write about the black characters from the perspective of an outsider.
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5. Kanye West's College Dropout

   I wasn't impressed by Kanye West's early singles, but when "All Falls Down" hit the airwaves, I was intrigued. Counter to the prevalent trends in hip hop, the song combined a viciously on-target attack on materialism in the black community with a mea culpa admission of the rapper's own inability to resist. The anti-material stance would have been enough to make me a fan, b...
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6. More

   Watch This Short Animated Film
   
   Mark Osborne's "More" is a fantastic animated short. It was nominated for an Oscar the year it was released, and later received a second audience as the music video for Kenna's "Hell Bent".
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7. Movies: Not There

   I knew even before the house lights went down that I needed to approach this film in the right frame of mind. I knew not to expect a rational or linear plotline, that my disbelief would need to be firmly suspended, and that I would have to forgo any spirit of antagonistic criticism.
   
   All that said, I found it a brilliant piece of work. Let me state, for the record, that I've never b...
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8. Outkast: Roses

   Watch This Video
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9. The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

   Just a few years prior to their artistic peak, the Beatles were nothing more than another boy band (the "N Sync" of their times, if you will) doing sub-average covers of R&B tunes like every other British group of the time. But several factors transformed them, and in a very short time.
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10. Michael Jackson: Smooth Criminal

    These days, when Michael Jackson is best known as the punchline to a joke --an accused molester in frightening whiteface --and when his albums and videos are increasingly overproduced, self-indulgent trifles, it’s easy to forget the consummate artist that he once was.
    
    That’s why it’s good to revisit what I would not hesitate to name the best music video of all time, "Smooth Criminal" ("Moonwalker" version).
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11. Outkast: Speakerboxx/The Love Below

    It's not really one Outkast album, it's two solo albums packaged together. So, let's take a look at them individually.
    
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12. Synecdoche, NY

    Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut is a fractal hallucination.
    
    NOTE: I'm not sure it makes sense to talk here of "spoilers" --since knowing the plot points will do little to destroy the surprises and pleasures of the movie. However, that said, this "review" is intended primarily for those who have already seen the movie.
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13. The Incredibles

    While I found it impossible not to like and enjoy Brad Bird's animated hit, I found myself a bit disturbed by the film's open embrace of Nietzschean philosophical conceits. It's always possible to tell a great deal about the nature of a superhero story by examining the the characteristics of the villian. In Unbreakable for example, (SPOILER) the villain is the hero's...
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14. The Station Agent

    The Station Agent is a quirky indie film with a strong cast. Part of the fun of the film for me was spotting familiar faces. The lead is Peter Dinklage, a man with dwarfism, who more recently appeared as the trouble-causing funeral-crasher in "Death at a Funeral." The female lead is Patricia Clarkson, whom I remember fondly from her role on my all-time favorite sitcom, the short-lived &q...
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