#February2017
Bill Paxton playing fear-mongering lawyer Jack Thompson in BBC ‘Grand Theft Auto’ film
Bill Paxton rules. And he’s pretty good at playing an unlikable guy. Which makes the actor the perfect choice to play the douchebag, fear-mongering lawyer Jack Thompson.
Tree of Life Owes Everything to Bill Paxton
Terrence Malick’s long-awaited wank-a-thon Tree of Life has been in select theaters for a few weeks now and will be getting a nationwide boost on July 8. As I’m writing this it’s 86% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. I saw it last Sunday and while I thought it was a stunning visual orgy, it didn’t really do much else for me. Especially Sean Penn. He’s one of my favorite dudes ever but his bits in the movie were pointless and his whole beach scene near the end is by far the cheesiest scene of 2011.
I’m not here to knock the enigmatic Malick or his new movie though. You should go see it in the theater if you have the chance. You’ll never see another film like it, that’s a Malick guarantee! But the movie got me and my girl thinking about another film. A similar yet superior film from a decade ago: Frailty. Directed by Bill Goddamn Paxton and written by Brent Hanley (who wrote the “Family” episode of Masters of Horror), Frailty is a southern-fried gothic thriller in which a fanatic father (Paxton) has visions that drive him to seek and kill “demons,” bringing his two young sons along for the ride. I admit, comparing these two films is like trying to draw concrete comparisons between The Wire and Everybody Loves Raymond, but Malick and Paxton’s tales of the south have more in common than you think. I might even smell some plagiarism…
