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About Jack Gattanella

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So far Jack Gattanella has created 104 blog entries.

Midnight Special

Who really is Alton (who can shoot beams of light from his eyes) and why are so many people looking for him?

By |April 9th, 2016|American|0 Comments

Everybody Wants Some!!

The entire tone of Richard Linklater's new, low-key film is infectious in a positive, sweet way. The characters are fun, vibrant, a little wild, and off-kilter, lacking in a cynicism often found in college comedies.

By |April 4th, 2016|Comedy, Top Picks|0 Comments

Knight of Cups

There are funny and heavily satirical moments of Hollywood excess and ennui. Think Stardust Memories with Bret Easton Ellis’s acid view of Hollywood. If some passages fly over viewers’ heads, there is still the breathtaking cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki.

By |March 17th, 2016|American|1 Comment

Triple 9

The rough and intense Triple 9 goes to the limit of what we’ve seen of corrupt cops in movies, and with a near-perfect cast: Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anthony Mackie, and Aaron Paul. In other words, it’s another button pushing, balls-to-the-wall John Hillcoat movie.

By |February 25th, 2016|Crime, Thriller|0 Comments

Hail, Caesar!

Hail, Caesar! is a big, luscious, gorgeous ode to the Golden Age of Hollywood—a certain kind of Hollywood, at any rate. It’s a work that is great and minor at the same time. It has a passable central plot while everything else around it, all of the moving parts, is wonderful and hysterically funny and often […]

By |February 22nd, 2016|Comedy, Film History, Satire|0 Comments

The Revenant

As has been reported often over the past year, The Revenant was a troubled shoot, where the budget rose to great heights and crew walked off over the unendurable conditions on location in the woods of Alberta, Canada, where the temperature went down to minus 40 below. To the actors’ credit, most of all Leonardo […]

By |December 29th, 2015|Action, Book adaptation, Western|2 Comments

The Hateful Eight

Let’s get the premise out of the way first, shall we? John Ruth “The Hangman” (Kurt Russell) is gonna take Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh, sporting a big black eye that is never explained but doesn’t has to be, to Red Rock, Wyoming, circa early 1870’s (give or take a few years). There she’s […]

By |December 20th, 2015|DVD/Streaming/On Demand, Top Picks, Western|1 Comment

Anomalisa

It’s tough to digest a film written by Charlie Kaufman right after you have seen it. Even the more accessible ones are enigmatic: Being John Malkovich (involving a portal into actor John Malkovich’s mind) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where Jim Carrey erases all memories, literally, of his relationship with Kate Winslet […]

By |December 19th, 2015|Animated, Road Trip, Top Picks|0 Comments

Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans

In 1970, Steve McQueen was on top of the world as a box-office star, coming off of films like The Thomas Crown Affair and Bullitt. He was called the “King of Cool” (one of several nicknames you can see on his IMDb profile). So he decided to go for his longtime passion, auto racing, in […]

By |November 13th, 2015|Documentary, Film History|0 Comments