Groundhog Day, Philosopher Style!

I am here to ruin your experience of a richly entertaining film.

Groundhog Day never won an Oscar, but it gained recognition in a number of other ways. It is on AFI’s 100 Funniest Films list, (number 34) and it won a Britsh comedy award. And it has been acclaimed by the U.S. National Film Registry as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Whatever that means.

What it deserves to win, should there be such an award, is Best Philosophical Movie.

Perhaps you consider the Bill Murray fest to simply be his best performance, and it might be that. Perhaps you think of it as a quiet comedy. Perhaps you are one of the few who consider it to be one of the more entertaining films ever made. But I am here to tell you that it is an intellectual feast, made for the common folk.


The rest of this review can be found at The Reelists:
The Gospel According to Groundhog Day

The Conflict of Kill Bill

My latest article examining the worldview of a film is about Kill Bill, both volumes.

Quentin Tarantino is the master of the overlapping ethical systems. Okay, that sounded really boring, so let me just say that, as far as morality goes, QT can’t seem to make up his friggin’ mind. In Pulp Fiction, although a movie about the mob is just as much about conversion. Inglourious Basterds is both a revenge film and is speaking of the immorality of revenge. Kill Bill, however, has two complex worldviews competing throughout the film, and it is fascinating to dissect each of them, figure out what makes them tick and how they act like two bulls in a sparring match. With Uzis.

Read the rest here at The Reelists.

JAMB Featured in The Reelists!

Corey Atad of The Reelists approached me to do a regular column on their website. The first article was just posted and you can read it here.

Here's a taste...

A true love of film is a recent development for me but a love of literature was ignited when I was a schoolboy. I fell in love with poetry, novels and especially drama. Perhaps my love of drama and dialogue segues easily to cinema, as does my favorite dramatist, George Bernard Shaw. From the 30s to the 50s and on the BBC in the 70s a number of Shaw plays made their way to the screen, most famously in the musical My Fair Lady, based upon Shaw’s play Pygmalion. This is easy to understand, as Shaw is witty and smart and his themes are deep. On the other hand, his plays, while dramatic, do not emphasize the visual, but the conceptual. The visual presentation of Shaw’s vision is really dependent on the director and his supporters.

It is fascinating then to watch Major Barbara, the only Shaw work on film I’ve seen apart from My Fair Lady. It is fun to see Rex Harrison, a star best known for the My Fair Lady, as a young man, less confident but strong as the man romantically interested in the title character, a Major in the Salvation Army in London. Wendy Hiller is marvelous as the Major in the early scenes of the film where she is strong and in charge, but as her character’s morale falters, so does her performance. The real star of the show is Barbara’s father, Andrew Undershaft, played by Robert Morley. He is despicable in the most charming manner possible, so much so that it is impossible to hate him, especially as he plays his trump card at the end of the film.

Read the rest on The Reelist's website.