Bugs, Baby Birds & 'Blood'

Inside a deep, dark hole, a man pickaxes the hard-packed soil like a bug gnawing through dirt. (Manohla Dargis in The NYT writing about the film "There Will Be Blood").

And ...

Poor, isolated, thirsting for water (they don’t have enough even to grow wheat), the dazed inhabitants gaze at the oilman like hungry baby birds.

And ...

[Daniel] Day-Lewis’s outsize performance, with its footnote references to Huston and strange, contorted Kabuki-like grimaces, occasionally breaks the skin of the film’s surface like a dangerous undertow.

Cue the Breeze

Michael Cera enters a scene like a soft breeze. (David Denby in The New Yorker on the new film "Juno."

Phoenix Gets 'Owned'

... the life begins to leak out of “We Own the Night,” and especially out of [Joaquin] Phoenix’s performance. In the actor’s case, this seems deliberate, as if he had chosen to interpret grief as a form of petrifaction. His elbows and shoulders stiffen, and he lumbers across the sets like a Frankenstein monster. (A.O. Scott in The NYT).

And ...

“I feel light as a feather,” Bobby says in a crucial scene, at which point the movie starts to sink like a stone.

Jesse James: Can't Keep a Good Crook Down

Bad man, poor man, bushwhacker, thief, [Jesse] James was as American as apple pie and the Confederate flag he wrapped himself in like an excuse. (Manohla Dargis in The NYT about the new Brad Pitt film).

And ...

Like a schoolgirl with a crush, [gunslinger] Bob Ford keeps his treasured Jesse James dime novels in a box under his bed.

Bourne Ultimatum:: Doubling Down on Similes

Jaw clenched, brow knotted, body tight as a secret, Matt Damon hurtles through “The Bourne Ultimatum” like a missile. (Manohla Dargis in The NYT).

Assessing Angelina

[Angelina Jolie] is not short, but she is very small, down to her bones, which are like twigs. And yet her flesh -- her golden, mortified flesh -- is extraordinary: Like the sheets on a barracks bed, there's no slack to it. (Tom Junod in Esquire).

And ...

She shines all over. Her eyes and her lips are, as advertised, extravagant creations, but then, in addition to all that extravagance, they also glisten like wet roads in a car commercial. (Junod).

Hot Enough For You?

We are invited to worship the sun both as lifegiver, for those left behind on Earth, and as a kind of annihilating deity; when one spacewalker drifts beyond the limits of the sunshield and catches a direct blast of solar ray, there is a tiny pffsst, and he boils away to nothingness, like a waterdrop on a stove. (Anthony Lane in The New Yorker on the new film "Sunshine").

2007: A Political Odyssey

Bless Ed Markey, the House telecom subcommittee chairman, but it didn't enter his head unaided to hold up an iPhone at a hearing last week and -- like the ape in the movie "2001" -- ponder why he shouldn't use it with any wireless network he wants rather than just AT&T's. (Holman W. Jenkins Jr. in the WSJ on the Google lobby).

Genre Man: Not a Flattering Picture

His beard is haphazard and unintentional, and he dresses in sweats, or in shorts and a T-shirt, or with his shirt hanging out like the tongue of a Labrador retriever. (David Denby in The New Yorker about film's romantic-comedy characters of late).

And ...

When he’s with them [friends], punched beer cans and bongs of various sizes lie around like spent shells; alone, and walrus-heavy on his couch, he watches football, basketball, or baseball on television, or spends time memorializing his youth—archiving old movies, games, and jokes. (Denby)

And ...

Katharine Hepburn in “Baby” nearly drives Cary Grant crazy with her intrusions into his work, her way of scattering his life about like pieces of lawn furniture. (Denby).

And ...

If Tracy and Hepburn were like a rock and a current mysteriously joined together, these two neurotics [in "Annie Hall"] were like agitated hummingbirds meeting in midair. (Denby)

Day at the Beach for Lady Chatterley

Viewers will no doubt like and dislike Pascale Ferran's "Lady Chatterley" in ample numbers, but the picture itself is an impressive construction that seems indifferent to such concerns. Watching it is something like swimming in the ocean: You have an idyllic, sun-struck dip for a while, and then the sun goes behind a cloud and you get stung by jellyfish and heaved up on the beach, shivering, half-dead and slimed with seaweed. It's all the same to the ocean. (Andrew O'Hehir on Salon.com).

Lee Marvin, a (Belated) R.I.P.

Lee Marvin moved across the screen like a shark coming in for the kill. Long and lean, with shoulders that looked as wide as his hips and hair as silver as a bullet, he seemed built for speed. (The NYT).

Try to Keep Down the Popcorn

In any case, this dawn-of-the-dead fantasia is gleefully disgusting: flesh melts, bodies explode like packages of liquid squeezed too hard, testicles roll around on the ground like spilled Brussels sprouts. (David Denby's "Grindhouse" review in The New Yorker).

And ...

When Cherry loses a leg to the ghouls, her old lover (Freddy Rodriguez, who’s a pocket-size dynamo) outfits her with a machine gun for a stump; she raises it like a dog taking a pee and blows away anyone within fifty yards. (Denby).

Six Packs on Parade: Sparta's 300 Go to War

And what guys! Decked out like gladiators in a gay fashion layout, the soldiers from the Greek city-state of Sparta look gym-ready for battle in crotch-squeezing ensembles that expose as much flesh as an R rating will allow. (RollingStone review).

Expecting Freddy in the Garden State

Because of spending controls, the half penny and fewer uses of one-shots, the structural deficit has been reduced – for the moment. But like Freddy Krueger, it’ll be back. (Gov. John Corzine of New Jersey in Budget Address).

From the Land of Oz

Those striped socks, curling back like a pair of deflating noisemakers. ... (Article in The NYT on Meinhardt Raabe, 91, the Munchkin coroner who confirmed the death of the Wicked Witch in "The Wizard of Oz." Times Select signup required.)

Similes on the Big Screen, Take 6

From "Jaws" (1975)

And, you know, the thing about a shark ... he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. (Quint)

See what I do, Chief, is I trick 'em to the surface. And I jab at 'em. I'm not gonna haul 'em up like a lot of catfish. (Quint)

"Blade Runner" (1982)

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die. (Batty)

"The Big Sleep" (1942)

[About orchids] Ugh. Nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men, and their perfume has the rotten sweetness of corruption. (General Sternwood)

I seem to exist largely on heat like a new born spider. (General Sternwood).

Do you always think you can handle people like, uh, trained seals? (Vivian)

'Pirates' in Miniature: Future of Movies?

… I rested the iPod on my stomach. And there it sat, riding up and down every time I took a breath. I was on the Black Pearl, all right, standing on her foredeck like a drunken sailor as she plowed through heavy seas. The horizon line kept pitching and heaving, and I had trouble seeing much of anything. ( David Denby in The New Yorker on “The Pirates of the Caribbean” on the video iPod and the future of movies).

And …

The interiors were as dark as caves….

… My ears, fed by headphones, were filled with such details as the chafing of hawsers and feet stomping on straw, but there below me Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom were duelling like two angry mosquitoes in a jar….

… The skeletons danced on shipboard; their bones looked like pieces of string dipped in Elmer’s glue.

Similes on the Big Screen, Take 5

From “The Godfather” (1972):

She resisted. She kept her honor. So they beat her, like an animal. (Bonasera).

What's the matter with you. Is this how you turned out? A Hollywood finocchio that cries like a woman. (Don Corleone).

“The Godfather: Part II” (1974):

Those were the great old days, you know ... And we was like the Roman Empire ... The Corleone family was like the Roman Empire... (Frank Pentangeli)

“The Godfather: Part III” (1990):

Uncle Michael, listen … I know you're into banks and Wall Street, but everyone knows you're the final word, you're like the Supreme Court. (Vincent Mancini)

Similes on the Big Screen, Take 4: OK . . . Cue 'The Ride of the Valkyries'

From "Apocalypse Now" …

I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory. (Kilgore).

We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. (Kurtz).

I was going to the worst place in the world and I didn't even know it yet. Weeks away and hundreds of miles up a river that snaked through the war like a main circuit cable - plugged straight into Kurtz. (Willard).

Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. (Willard).

… charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500. (Willard).

The Smell of Gold, the Fear of Sleep

Similes on the Big Screen, Take 3:

Believe it or not, I knew a fellow once who could smell gold like a jackass can smell water. (Howard, “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” 1948)

I can't sleep any more. It's too much like death. (Cosmo, “Moonstruck,” 1987)

An artist without freedom is like a bird without wings.(Anatoly, “Moscow on the Hudson,” 1984)

He spurned me like a strumpet in the street. (Nefretiri, “The Ten Commandments,” 1956)

You know what I feel like? I feel all the time like a cat on a hot tin roof. (Margaret, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” 1958)

From “The Cat in the Hat,” (2003):

Conrad: I'm not going to military school.
Lawrence Quinn: Oh, I think you're gonna love it! It's just like summer camp, except with brutal forced marches and soul-crushing discipline.

The Cat: Wow! This is just like the carnival, just without the abused animals and the drunken clowns with hepatitis.