FilmJerk Favorites

A group of unique directors and the essential works that you've got to see.

||| Sergio Leone |||
Sergio Leone

Leone’s career is remarkable in its unrelenting attention to both American culture and the American genre film, exploring the mythic America he created with each successive film examining the established characters in greater depth.

Only his second feature (a remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo), Leone's landmark "spaghetti western" caused a revolution and features Clint Eastwood in his breakthrough role as "The Man With No Name". This classic brutal drama of feuding families wasn’t the first spaghetti Western, but it was far and away the most successful up to that time.

Plot is of minimal interest, but character is everything to Leone, who places immense meaning in the slightest flick of an eyelid, extensively using the extreme close-up on the eyes to reveal any feeling, as demonstrated by Clint, who squints his way through this slam-bang sequel to A Fistful of Dollars as a wandering gunslinger that must combine forces with his nemesis to track down a wanted killer.

The final chapter in the groundbreaking trilogy follows Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach as they form an uneasy alliance to find a stash of hidden gold. Leone focuses on his central theme as they find themselves facing greed, treachery, and murder, showing that the desire for wealth and power turns men into ruthless creatures who violate land and family and believe that a man’s death is less important than how he faces it.

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Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen

By BrianOrndorf

February 19th, 2004

I am continually impressed by young actress Lindsay Lohan’s ability to charm. But her latest effort, “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen,” is strictly for the 16-year-old-girl demographic. Anybody outside of that audience will have a tough time swallowing the film’s liberal and careless chopping of its source material. and complete absence of logic.


Lola (another fine turn from Lindsay Lohan, “Freaky Friday”) and her family are giving up the big lights of New York City for the smaller pleasures to be found in New Jersey. Fearing a total cultural shutdown, Lola clings to her new friend Ella (Alison Pill, “Pieces of April“), and her lead role in the school musical, spinning lies and obsessions about her favorite rock band to anybody who will listen. When a chance encounter with the band’s lead singer (Adam Garcia, “Coyote Ugly“) sends Lola on a wild night of misadventures, she must keep her act together and try to shine brightly in the musical, which she views as her one shot at fame.

Based on the young adult novel by Dyan Sheldon, the movie adaptation of “Drama Queen” makes it feel like the filmmakers only captured half of the book. Targeted directly at 16 year-old girls, the picture evokes a feeling of being stuck in a small room with teenagers, which isn’t as insulting as it sounds. Director Sara Sugarman encapsulates the essence of popularity, style, and the frantic thought processes that fuel the youth of today. Sugarman also keeps the story flowing forward with flashes of animation, colorful (and plentiful) costumes, highly stylized depictions of New York (with rainbow colored garbage piles), and a goofy portrait of suburban New Jersey, which makes its introduction to the film with a cow’s moo on the soundtrack. Sure. Nothing says “farmland” like suburban New Jersey.

Like a tap dancer finishing off a case of Red Bull and thirsty for the spotlight, “Drama Queen” keeps flailing away in an effort to keep minds off the fact that no character or subplot in the finished film is coherent, or are even addressed more than passingly. For instance, take Lola’s father, who is the basis for Lola’s emotional arc in the film when she’s confronted over lying about his death to her classmates. Why Lola lies about her successful and beloved children’s book author father is never addressed, nor is this subplot seen to any type of rational conclusion. The same goes for Lola’s attraction to a requisite “cute boy” named Sam, who is ignored in the story, yet paid off at the end as a huge maturing step for Lola. And there are many more dropped ideas and characters littering the floor of the film. “Drama Queen” comes from a book, and feels just like it; corners were cut to keep the film moving as quickly as possible, and the narrative suffers in the end.

When a film like this doesn’t add up past any superficial stage, I find it hard to get excited. “Drama Queen” is another nice leading vehicle for Lindsay Lohan, but her charms can’t keep this misguided mess afloat long enough.

My rating: D+