By Brian Lafferty

July 9, 2012 (San Diego) – Leave it to Oliver Stone to take sleazy, salacious, and lurid material and transform it into art. Very few filmmakers can make graphic violence so lyrical without pretension the way Stone does in Savages. On the surface the film is trashy, but if you look deeper, this trash has class.

By Brian Lafferty

May 4, 2012 (San Diego) – The Pirates! Band of Misfits opens with a feel-good opening sequence. The Pirate Captain (voiced by Hugh Grant) and his misfit crew pillages island after island in the Caribbean under the strains of Tenpole Tudor’s “Swords of a Thousand Men.” It’s a fitting song. The way the rah-rah and go-getting lyrics and music matched the action on-screen made me smile.

If only the film matched that energy and excitement for the film’s remaining 85 minutes.