Spitball Army

THICKER THAN WATER (2015): 15-minute Greg Louganis pity piece by ESPN avoids a critical appraisal of his 1988 blood-baring Olympic accident.

— Fred Osuna (@spitballarmy) January 3, 2017

I'm reading The Sellout by Paul Beatty, which I borrowed from my local book emporium (otherwise known as a library). #ReadersUnite @BPL

— Fred Osuna (@spitballarmy) January 3, 2017

13th (2016): Enlightening on many levels, the least of which is that one can pad a film's time by filling the screen with rap song lyrics.

— Fred Osuna (@spitballarmy) January 3, 2017

JASON BOURNE (2016): Murky sequel manages to turn graceful Alicia Vikander to wood. Still, main character's predicament remains intriguing.

— Fred Osuna (@spitballarmy) January 3, 2017

THE CORSICAN BROTHERS (1941): Contains the most furious and noisy sword duel (beween Akim Tamiroff & Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) I've ever seen.

— Fred Osuna (@spitballarmy) January 2, 2017

AMANDA KNOX (2016): Just because someone's careless, immature, reckless, unsympathetic and a foreigner doesn't make 'em a murderer, does it?

— Fred Osuna (@spitballarmy) January 2, 2017

THE GOOD DINOSAUR (2015): After the giant meteor didn't hit, anthropomorphic apatosauruses taught pets (savage grunting humans) how to farm.

— Fred Osuna (@spitballarmy) January 2, 2017

Much has been made of Laughton’s decision to shoot the film in black and white; Couchman writes persuasively about Laughton’s debt to early silent film and to the films of the German Expressionists. In any case, having seen the film, we are utterly unable to imagine it in color. This is partly because the clear and sharp division between black and white mirrors the clarity and the extremity of the film’s divisions between good and evil. Except perhaps in the cases of Ben Harper, who commits a crime out of poverty and desperation, and Willa, who convinces herself that marrying Powell is her salvation, very little in the film occurs in any sort of “gray area” of moral ambiguity—of characters doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.

Francine Prose writes about “the primal pull of Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter” for The Library of America’s weekly “Moviegoer” column.

Leaving The Hateful Eight tonight, a woman who had also stayed through the closing credits says to me, “And they say that was about the futility of war.” Where did she get that? my lazy brain thinks, refusing to make any grand interpretation of a film with exploding heads, a toothless bloody-faced female lead and more instances of the N-word than I’ve probably heard in my entire life. “I guess that’s one way to look at it,” I say in return. “What?” she winces at me, less from not hearing me and more with an officious incredulity communicating that she wasn’t willing to accept that I didn’t find her quasi-analysis witty. “I said ‘I GUESS THAT’S ONE WAY TO LOOK AT IT!!'” in my loudest possible outside voice, begging a fight with an invitation that echoed around the corner to the popcorn seasoning stand.