The sports biopic usually depicts their subject as someone of a grit and determination we should align with and aspire towards, and so Marty Supreme observing it's subject with not an ounce of reverence tickled me. Marty, single-minded narcissist, so devoted to his dream that he has a solipsist's view of the people around him (I was taken aback hearing him say that he gives his friend meaning, and again when he abandons a pregnant fling on the basis that…

The gorgeous shots/transitions tend to make interesting the depressing, well-worn thesis at the heart of this film: that an efficient capitalist system will always do away with the waste and gristle, coming to a point where the human spirit (with all of its inefficient attachments and values) is degraded and then conformed into a gear of the machine that will ground others to dust simply to ensure its survival. There is humor to be found, but a kind in which…

The staff of a hotel that houses the suicidal are callous to the circumstances of their job; those that choose not to commit suicide are met steely indifference by reception, and those that do are wheeled out on gurnies by workers bemoaning the chosen method of death, having seen it all before. When tasked with kicking out a tenant whose overstayed her welcome, a quiet bond is formed between the two as he allows her one more night to make…

Point Break could have easily been a throwaway buddy cop film with a twinge of California bro based on the premise: Reaves' Johnny Utah, a fledgling FBI agent infiltrates a gang of surfers suspected of staging seasonal bank heists, headed by Swayze's Bodhi, whose actions, crimes and motivations hinge on the deeply spiritual instead of the material. As Utah finds himself in too deep with the lifestyle, with the gang, he begins to fall under the allure of ostensibly a…