Author: Bob Westal

A hard-edged, old-school action-fest with real stunts and car chases might seem like a tall order for a three-time director whose prior films were the family-centric comedy-drama, “Soul Food,” and a pair of movie biographies: “Men of Honor,” with Robert De Niro and Cuba Gooding as barrier-breaking African-American Navy diver and amputee Carl Brashear, and “Notorious” about the late rapper, Notorious B.I.G. The soft-spoken George Tillman, Jr. appears to have taken the challenges in his stride, however, while acknowledging their difficulty. It probably helps that he’s also been the producer of a number of films, including the highly successful “Barbershop”…

Americans spent a good chunk of the 70s debating the now completely uncontroversial and self-evident idea that women and men should be paid the same amount for the same work. However, by the time allegedly bra-burning “women’s libbers” got to facing off against “male chauvinist pigs” here in the States, the British had already mostly settled the matter. As the funny and alarmingly cheerful “Made in Dagenham” shows, a good deal of the credit for that fact goes to a group of unionized female Ford factory workers based out of a slightly grimy London suburb. As a snazzy opening credits…

Simplicity often trumps originality at the movies. The set-up for the first feature from writer-director Patrick Hughes is not at all original, but it is terrifically simple. Youngish policeman Shane Cooper (Ryan Kwanten) and his wife, Alice (Claire van der Boom), have transferred from Melbourne to a tiny town in the Australian outback. Mrs. Cooper is in the middle of a difficult pregnancy and they are moving for the sake of some blood pressure-lowering peace and quiet on the advice of their obstetrician. Stupid, stupid doctor. At first, things appear literally sleepy as the newcomer catches one of his older…

“My movie is not about Vietnam…my movie is Vietnam. It’s what it was really like. There were too many of us, we had access to too much equipment, too much money, and little by little we went insane.” – Francis Ford Coppola When the DVD special edition, “Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier,” came out back in 2006, nearly ever review (including Bullz-Eye’s) complained of one glaring omission rendering the “dossier” less than complete: the remarkable “making of” documentary, “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse.” Reviewers were right to complain: the film is a must not only for fans of “Apocalypse…

To give you an idea of just how terrific a filmmaker Stephen Frears is, I’d like to list a few of his movies, but I don’t know where to start. Going as far back as his still oddly obscure 1984 breakthrough, “The Hit,” to his Oscar-winning drama, “The Queen,” he is the greatest living director no one writes much about. Semi-famed for his self-proclaimed complete lack of a style or, more accurately, for his ability to create a new and appropriate style to fit each screenplay regardless of genre, Stephen Frears’ movies are united only by a subtle visual flair,…

After working on noted music-related documentaries “New York Doll” and “Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing” as a producer, editor, and director of photography, and with a background that included studies in architecture and design at Harvard and Yale, Seth Gordon hit the documentary scene big time with his outstandingly enjoyable 2007 documentary, “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters,” about the rough and tumble world of competitive Donkey Kong. It was an epic embodiment of the cliché “They fight so hard because the stakes are so small,” and one of the most widely liked documentaries of the last…

Morgan Spurlock became one of the biggest names in documentaries by doing something that, if he’d kept it up, would have made him one of the biggest bodies in all of cinema. Of course, I speak of 2004’s Oscar-nominated “Super Size Me,” in which the devoted boyfriend of a vegan chef ate all of his meals at the home of ultra-unhealthy/unsustainable high-calorie cuisine, McDonald’s. That was followed by a difficult weight loss and the reality television series “30 Days,” in which Spurlock and his now-wife, Alexandra Jamieson, kicked off the program by living on minimum wage for a month. His…

A confession: I grew up pretty much idolizing Woody Allen. In his older age, however, I’ve come close to abandoning him. A disappointing evening with his traditional jazz band in the 90s left a bad taste in the mouth and not only from the overpriced food at Michael’s Pub, but also because Allen took all the solos while being by his own admission by far the worst player in his own band. The scandal that left him with a much younger wife who is also his ex-significant other’s adopted daughter was distasteful in a different way, though I’m a firm…

According to mega-documentarian muckraker Alex Gibney, power and money have become one and the same thing in American politics. That is the story behind the story of “Casino Jack and the United States of Money,” which details the massive corruption scandal centering on the once powerful and lavishly wealthy lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. The affair’s complex tentacles ensnared some 20 members of congress and helped pave the way for the Republican Party’s historic defeat in the 2006 congressional elections. Gibney starts out by focusing on Abramoff as a young conservative. Like his hero, Ronald Reagan, movies seem to have a played…

If you are old enough to have been paying attention to such matters during the early-to-mid 90s, you may remember that there was once a great deal of doubt that this “world wide web” thing would ever really catch on. One huge problem, probably the hugest, was how in the world to make money off of it. Well, that’s still not entirely clear, but at one point, making money on a site was next to impossible. In retrospect, it seems inevitable that it was the online pimps of the ‘net analogue to the world’s oldest profession who were the first…