Black Swan: A Movie Review by John Lobell A female ballet dancer in a New York Lincoln Center company has for too long been passed over, but now she has been chosen for a role in a reworked Swan Lake which will require her to dance both the role of the pure White Swan, and […]
On Skyline
Skyline: A Movie Review by John Lobell [Spoiler alert] Mummy movies begin with the 1932 film The Mummy starring Boris Karloff, and subsequent mummy movies follow the pattern it lays down. Our mummy, who has survived for thousands of years (by the miracle of tana leaves) is seeking to kill a contemporary woman whom he […]
Splice: A Movie Review
by John Lobell [Spoiler alert] First, some personal background. I have for the past few years been consulting on a project called Timeship, a $300 million project devoted to extreme life extension. Put simply, the developers of the project object to death and intend to “cure” it, finding the genetic cause of aging and turning […]
On Harry Brown
Harry Brown: A Movie Review (Actually more of a political comment). By John Lobell Harry Brown, with seventy-seven year old Michael Caine, is in the tradition of Death Wish but it most closely evokes eighty year old Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino, even to the point of using the “Harry” from Eastwood’s earlier Dirty Harry movies. […]
On Clash of the Titans
Clash of the Titans: A Movie Review (Actually, more of a meditation) by John Lobell Ok, a mish mash of plots and stories, quarrels and backstabbing among the Greek gods (no Titans, despite the title), confused story lines, and lame dialogue. So, should we just appreciate the great special effects (love that Pegasus) and dismiss […]
On Law Abiding Citizen
Or How to Review an Archetypal Movie, Again By John Lobell A while back, I did a review of Phantom of the Opera in which I took reviewers to task for not knowing what the movie was about. (See https://www.cinemadiscourse.com/the-phantom-of-the-opera/ ) As those who make movies move to explore archetypal themes, they are leaving the […]
Looking back at Apocalypse Now
APOCALYPSE NOW Directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola A movie review by John Lobell Apocalypse Now is number five on Ebert’s list on this site of visionary movies (2001 is number 1). He writes: “Coppola’s epic retelling of The Odyssey combined with Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a totally unique, absolutely original cinematic vision. Again, […]
On Technology
The Rise of the Machines: A Contrarian View By John Lobell Many, including John Ebert, have been seeing movies like Terminator: Salvation as growing out of our unease, perhaps even fear of the intrusion of machines into our lives. And, as Ebert points out, the far out science fiction of these movies is fast becoming […]
On Star Trek
Star Trek: A Movie Review By John Lobell The new Star Trek movie is so highly satisfying because it introduces a richness of back-story into a franchise we know so well, and because it adds a mythological depth. This depth does not approach that of Star Wars, but it is there. And since we now […]
On Babylon A.D.
Babylon A.D.: A Movie Review  By John Lobell While 2001: A Space Odyssey can be regarded as the origin of the modern visionary movie, The Matrix is the origin of the contemporary “luminous transcendent” movie. It is a genre that freaks out the critics, with its deaths and resurrections, virgin births, and suggestions that human beings are […]
On Wanted
Wanted: A Movie Review By John Lobell Myths are a repository of the structures and mores of a culture, a suprapsychology, a system of principles describing the nature and workings of being, the universe, society, and individual development. Movies have become a dominant artistic form in our culture, and are therefore a major vehicle for […]
On Andy Warhol
 Andy Warhol: Prophet of You Tube By John David Ebert 1. Andy Warhol was the first great icon painter of electronic society. In contemplating his gallery of celebrity portraits, we are struck by the possibility that some Medieval icon painter, an Andre Rublev, say, had died and been reborn in the twentieth century as a […]
On Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes: Prototype For the Global Citizen By John David Ebert 1. Howard Hughes was the prototype for a new kind of human being: nomadic, uprooted, cityless, wandering, Hughes prefigured the coming inhabitant of our global aeropolis, the transurban world of “no-place” that has come to displace the traditional container of the geographically bounded cities […]
On The Maltese Falcon
The Maltese Falcon: An Archaeology of Ancient Images By John David Ebert 1. Every noir narrative begins with a corpse, and in the present case, we are confronted with the dead body of one “Miles Archer,” a man whom, we soon discover, was the partner of Sam Spade. Together, the pair ran a private detective agency […]
On the Kennedy Assassination
The War Between Eye and Ear in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy By John David Ebert If one considers the possibility that it was indeed the CIA — or certain elements within the CIA — who decided to assassinate Kennedy, one is struck by the suspicion that the act itself was an indirect condemnation […]