Email Author Michael Atkinson

2006 Stories by Michael Atkinson

• Life Is Sweet

  published October 5, 2006

  Moving and ambitious in scale like nothing else in cinema, Michael Apted's Up films began in 1964 as a BBC news program exploring an old... More >>

• In Retrospect

  published September 28, 2006

  Self-conscious aesthete, existential structuralist, one of the world's most eloquent conjoiners of metaphysical mystery and sociopolitical... More >>

• Populist Mechanics

  published September 21, 2006

  According to the publicity material for All the King¹s Men, bringing Robert Penn Warren's 1946 novel of the same name to the... More >>

• A Tale of Two Pedros

  published September 14, 2006

  Viva Pedro: A Festival of the Best of Pedro Almodovar raises some questions -- namely, which Almodovar? The Pedro gloriously festivaled and... More >>

• Shmuck in the Muck

  published September 14, 2006

  An act, more than anything, of due homage and genuflection to David Mamet the '70s-'80s theatrical provocateur (as opposed to Mamet the '90s-'00s... More >>

• Panic Womb

  published September 7, 2006

  A number of pregnant mysteries arise with the new remake of Robin Hardy's 1973 cult-remembered genre work. Namely, what's in this kind of malarkey... More >>

• About a Boi

  published August 24, 2006

  One of the weakest and most ridiculous aspects of popular culture is its narcissistic now-ness. There's often no then or later, and without past... More >>

• All Wet

  published July 20, 2006

  It would be a mighty sweet thing to see M. Night Shyamalan as the great redemptive storyteller he clearly thinks he is -- or as he portrays... More >>

• The Citizen Kane of Crap

  published June 29, 2006

  The Devil's Sword (Mondo Macabro) Few trash movies live up to their reputation, but here's a balls-out wonder that surpasses... More >>

• Girl Trouble

  published June 15, 2006

  By now, for masses of believers in mad Korean pulp as it has been epitomized by Park Chan-wook's Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and... More >>

• This Time, It's Serious

  published May 18, 2006

  Winter Passing (Fox) Try this, should you be inclined to rent this downer from writer-director Adam Rapp: Skip from chapter to chapter... More >>

• That Stinking Feeling

  published May 11, 2006

  Our anemic movie industry recycles so relentlessly that even our complaints about such plasticized repackaging comes off as recycled product of... More >>

• Technicolor Yuan

  published May 4, 2006

  Coming closer even than Zhang Yimou's House of Flying Daggers to resembling the Chinese cover art for an Iron Butterfly album, Chen Kaige's... More >>

• Sans Quentin

  published April 6, 2006

  You may not yet have lost your ardor and respect for the pressure-point hammerblow Quentin Tarantino executed on American movies, but it's... More >>

• Nouveau Noir

  published April 6, 2006

  Calling Rian Johnson's teen indie-drama Brick a piece of stuntwork might seem tantamount to hitting it with a pie, but it's a... More >>

• Knockoff

  published April 6, 2006

  We've all done it -- killed an afternoon drinking in a pleasantly grungy roadhouse somewhere, boozily enjoying the illusion of having fallen off... More >>

• Puff Piece

  published March 30, 2006

  You want an easy job, go join the Red Cross," someone says well into Thank You for Smoking, a gleeful farce about capitalist... More >>

• Look Away

  published March 9, 2006

  Anyone who remembers the 1977 Wes Craven film The Hills Have Eyes, which was and remains a piece of Milwaukee-beer shit, remembers... More >>

• This Dogg's Got Bite

  published March 9, 2006

  The Tenants (Sony> Fifteen seconds into the video for "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang," it was obvious that Snoop Dog had charisma to spare.... More >>

• Hard Ride

  published March 2, 2006

  Didn't Richard Donner retire? A 1980s star-director name, among many, that should now send bolts of discouraging dread down your spine, Richard... More >>

• The Great Cash-In

  published March 2, 2006

  Walk the Line (Fox) No matter what a junkie does with his spare time -- say, redefine country music, or forge one of history's most... More >>