For critics, bloggers, and all-around cineastes, the end of the calendar year marks a time to look back and reflect on the best offerings of the last three hundred and sixty five days (and sometimes even the worst). This is when we talk about the There Will Be Bloods and the Hurt Lockers, the Slumdog Millionaires and the Yi Yis; it’s when we decry the dreck that fills the spaces in between the better releases, the Battlefield Earths and the Giglis, the Pearl Harbors and the The Number 23s. (And I realize that this collection of titles represents only a microcosm of the cinema that makes its way to theaters…
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G-S-T Review…Detention
(Author’s note: a few weeks ago I participated in a round table interview with Detention director Joseph Kahn. That feature was published over on my site, A Constant Visual Feast; it makes for a great read in conjunction with the review itself. Go here to read the interview if you haven’t already!) There’s really no good preamble one can fashion to properly introduce Joseph Kahn’s sophomore feature length film, Detention, in a review; temptation and delusions of wit both want to nudge me into describing it as a film so utterly, enthusiastically, uniquely bonkers that it would behoove any cinephile to pay the purchase price of a ticket to watch it.…