FanFare

As investigative reporter Ward Jansen and his partner Yardley Acheman chase a sensational, career-making story with the help of Ward's younger brother Jack and sultry death-row groupie Charlotte Bless, the pair tries to prove violent swamp-dweller Hillary Van Wetter was framed for the murder of a corrupt local sheriff. [more inside]
posted by box on Aug 12, 2023 - 0 comments

[TRAILER] When a German U-571 submarine with a sophisticated encryption machine onboard is sunk during a World War II battle at sea, the Allies send an American Navy force led by Lieutenant Andrew Tyler (Matthew McConaughey) to retrieve it for study. Boarding the German ship, the Americans' cover as a rescue force is quickly blown. Forced to take the crew hostage, the Americans lay their explosives and prepare to destroy the German vessel before the Nazis can send naval backup. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown on Aug 8, 2023 - 7 comments

Benjamin Barry is an advertising executive and ladies' man who, to win a big campaign, bets that he can make a woman fall in love with him in 10 days. [more inside]
posted by Carillon on Jul 8, 2023 - 8 comments

Mary Fiore is San Francisco's most successful supplier of romance and glamor. She knows all the tricks. She knows all the rules. But then she breaks the most important rule of all: she falls in love with the groom. [more inside]
posted by Carillon on Jun 29, 2023 - 1 comment

This week.... Matthew McConaughey's had a five-and-a-half-hour-long "The Art of Livin'" Virtual Live Event that was bonkers. In the UK, they prepare for Charles' coronation despite facing serious economic problems. And Now: Is Matthew McConaughey OK? Main story: Biden, and the ways in which he's failed to live up to his campaign rhetoric regarding immigration, like the continued abuse of Title 42, a public health law, which began under Trump as a way to prevent access to immigrants and asylum seekers was began under Trump policy golem Stephen Miller, and which Biden has notably failed to stamp out." And Now: Wait, Did Tucker Carlson Know This Was Coming? (Statements Carlson has said on Fox News that could be seen to refer to his recent resignation-probable-firing.) On Youtube. (20 minutes) Finally, an update over the ads fo Radiant Plumbing and Air Conditioning, who makes strange and wonderful toilet-themed parodies of big movies for commercials. Last month LWT challenged them to make a toilet-themed commercial parody based on a movie of their choosing. They accepted in brilliant fashion, and the movie choice was, of all things, Magnolia. What they produced, awesomely, was... Magtoiletolia.
posted by JHarris on May 1, 2023 - 2 comments

In the late 1960s, the King of Rock and Roll is recruited by a shady spy agency to help battle the dark forces that threaten the country. [more inside]
posted by 1970s Antihero on Mar 20, 2023 - 1 comment

In 1839, the slave ship Amistad set sail from Cuba to America. During the long trip, Cinque (Djimon Hounsou) leads the slaves in an unprecedented uprising. They are then held prisoner in Connecticut, and their release becomes the subject of heated debate. Freed slave Theodore Joadson (Morgan Freeman) wants Cinque and the others exonerated and recruits property lawyer Roger Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey) to help his case. Eventually, John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins) also becomes an ally. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown on Feb 2, 2023 - 2 comments

A man confesses to an FBI agent his family's story of how his religious fanatic father's visions lead to a series of murders to destroy supposed "demons." [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown on Jan 9, 2023 - 5 comments

[TRAILER] Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller), pampered action superstar, sets out for Southeast Asia to take part in the biggest, most-expensive war movie produced, but soon after filming begins, he and his co-stars, Oscar-winner Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), comic Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) and the rest of the crew, must become real soldiers when fighting breaks out in that part of the jungle. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown on Dec 12, 2022 - 19 comments

A man is reluctant to tell his fiancée that his parents, uncle and brother are dwarfs. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown on Nov 16, 2022 - 4 comments

In 1987, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) takes an entry-level job at a Wall Street brokerage firm. By the early 1990s, while still in his 20s, Belfort founds his own firm, Stratton Oakmont. Together with his trusted lieutenant (Jonah Hill) and a merry band of brokers, Belfort makes a huge fortune by defrauding wealthy investors out of millions. However, while Belfort and his cronies partake in a hedonistic brew of sex, drugs and thrills, the SEC and the FBI close in on his empire of excess. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown on Sep 23, 2022 - 16 comments

The story of the Newton gang, the most successful bank robbers in history, owing to their good planning and minimal violence. [more inside]
posted by Carillon on Jun 20, 2022 - 2 comments

In small-town Texas, an affable mortician strikes up a friendship with a wealthy widow, though when she starts to become controlling, he goes to great lengths to separate himself from her grasp. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb on Jun 12, 2020 - 3 comments

An American expat tries to sell off his highly profitable marijuana empire in London, triggering plots, schemes, bribery and blackmail in an attempt to steal his domain out from under him.
posted by ellieBOA on Mar 25, 2020 - 4 comments

Zach Galifianakis and his oddball crew take a road trip to complete a series of high-profile celebrity interviews. Come for the cameos. Stay for the credits. [more inside]
posted by Stanczyk on Sep 21, 2019 - 17 comments

The Gunslinger, Roland Deschain, roams an Old West-like landscape where "the world has moved on" in pursuit of the man in black. Also searching for the fabled Dark Tower, in the hopes that reaching it will preserve his dying world. [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack on Aug 8, 2017 - 21 comments

Matthew McConaughey returns to host, Adele returns to sing, we witness a Thanksgiving Miracle, and Allen Degeneres asks, Should You Chime In On This?
posted by ckape on Nov 25, 2015 - 7 comments

In an attempt to raise the morale of his frightened and fudge-riddled crew, Stewart initiates a bonding session that devolves into ice-breaker games. When Karen discovers that one of the crew members is actually an alien who’s implanted memories in their heads, they play a high-stakes game of Mafia to weed out the intruder. [more inside]
posted by infinitewindow on Nov 14, 2015 - 4 comments

The adventures of incoming high school and junior high students on the last day of school, in May of 1976. [more inside]
posted by doctornecessiter on Jun 19, 2015 - 15 comments

The Problem: Like a young Billy Graham. [more inside]
posted by jazon on Mar 10, 2015 - 1 comment

In the Texas border town of Frontera, Sheriff Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper) digs up the past when he finds an old skull in the desert. As he traces the murder of Sheriff Charlie Wade (Kris Kristofferson) 40 years earlier, Deeds' investigation points toward his late father, the much-loved Deputy Buddy Deeds. Ignoring warnings not to delve any deeper, Sam rekindles a romance with his high school sweetheart while bringing up old tensions in the town and exposing secrets long put to rest. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb on Feb 4, 2015 - 11 comments

Christopher Nolan presents a sprawling (and sprawlingly reviewed) near-three-hour epic about the end of the world and Matthew McConaughey's attempt to find a new place for humanity among the stars. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan on Nov 7, 2014 - 171 comments

Case files... We're gonna hafta be lookin' at these records with fresh eyes, alright? Like we're totally green. Marty and Rust use every last resource to chase down Marty's hunch about the green-eared spaghetti monster. Green eyes, green ears, green paint, and then the Yellow King in Carcosa. [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Nov 4, 2014 - 7 comments

Rust convinces Marty that he has a debt, and the two begin to work together on the investigation again after a decade. Aside from one brief jaunt back to recount Rust's interview of Johnny Joanie, the story mostly moves forward in the present time as they follow up on the missing persons reports (not) filed about Marie Fontenot. [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Oct 28, 2014 - 6 comments

All the threads through 1995 and into 2002 begin to weave together as we watch the fate of both Marty's marriage and Rust's investigation. Cohle visits the families of missing children and follows up with old leads Joel Theriot and Reverend Tuttle, and realizes that his fears about the scope of the problem might have been an underestimation. Hart makes good on his down payment at the Bunny Ranch, and beats the crap outta pretty much ever'one. And in an oddly empty scene (that is, one with neither Rust or Marty in it) Papania and Gilbough bring in Maggie for some friendly questioning: In a former life I used to exhaust myself navigating crude men who thought they were clever. [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Oct 21, 2014 - 3 comments

Time is a flat circle. The story and its telling deviate explicitly, as Rust and Marty wrap up their respective interviews with Gilbough and Papania by relating the culminating, heroic events of their 1995 investigation and summarizing the subsequent several years. [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Oct 14, 2014 - 3 comments

The Detectives jump on the Reggie Ledoux lead, retracing some steps but altogether making progress in a new direction, earning leeway with their commanding officer in the process. But Rust's history and Marty's present personal situation make timely and not-so-timely intrusions (respectively), and the seeming inexorability of their plan to find Ledoux weighs heavy on them both. [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Oct 7, 2014 - 9 comments

Rust and Marty put off handing the case over to the fly-in boys for as long as possible, following scant leads to remote locations and coming away with a description of the monster at the end of their story as well as a name. A tall man, with facial scars. "Reggie Ledoux." The world needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door. - Rust | You just look them in the eyes and the whole story's right there. - Cohle [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Oct 1, 2014 - 5 comments

Meet LA State Police Criminal Investigation Division Detectives Martin Eric 'Marty' Hart (Woody Harrelson) and Rustin Spencer 'Rust' Cohle (Matthew McConaughey), both retired from the force, as they each sit down with State CID detectives in 2012 to go over an old homicide case of theirs from 1995 that has mysteriously resurfaced. As Nic Pizzolatto's story seeps slowly out of director Cary Joji Fukunaga's vision of their recollections, dank and withered and burned out hollow, the tale of occult, ritual, (iconic, planned) murder emerges from the jungle of coastal Louisiana like so much aluminum-tinged smoke and ash. People out here, it's like they don’t even know the outside world exists. [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Sep 15, 2014 - 10 comments