REVIEW: The Mosquito Coast [1986]

Ice is civilization. Anyone who has lived through the COVID pandemic with a MAGA-touting Trump lover in the family knows Allie Fox (Harrison Ford): a man so crippled by inadequacy and fear that he’ll twist himself into a pretzel to feign righteousness. It’s therefore interesting that this character is both anti-capitalism and anti-God since those are usually the means that facilitate that twist. But you listen to Allie’s opening rant (to his son Charlie, as played by River Phoenix, and ultimately to anyone in earshot of his intentionally sanctimonious shouting)…

Read More

FILM MARATHON: Julia Roberts #1 – Pretty Woman [1990]

“Well color me happy, there’s a sofa in here for two” And just like that, 1990s America fell in love with a hooker. A hooker named Julia Roberts. She had already arrived to many film-viewing women with a oft-mentioned scene in Steel Magnolias, but it was Pretty Woman that officially vaulted her to A-list status and onto the Oscar-winning trajectory to come. I’ve always avoided watching it due to the fact I’ve never been much of a Roberts fan and because, honestly, I’m a twenty-something male. I don’t wake up…

Read More