Bad Movie.
27 November 2011
Brand New Day
Though I am a sucker for Australian antics, and there were some awesome laugh out loud or cheer the underdog moments, here, there were far too many dull and draggy bits in between, and far too little depth.
09 November 2011
05 November 2011
28 October 2011
23 September 2011
17 September 2011
Paul
is funny, in that (excuse me while I get literal) Seth-Rogen-meets-Shaun-of-the-Dead-at-Comic-Con-near-Area-51 sort of way.
13 September 2011
Hereafter
Warner Bros must have grimaced as they wrote the check for this good but very slow, very personal, very idiosyncratic meditation on death. Although we might never have expected it, it makes sense that only the grand patriarch of the studio could have put such large resources together for such an unexpected project.
12 September 2011
Thor
Not bad at all for a comic book movie, and a reminder from Mr. Branagh that the gap between Marvel and Shakespeare is a lot narrower than we might have been led to believe.
10 September 2011
It's kind of a funny story
Indie films are as formulaic as summer blockbusters these days, but that doesn't mean a good example of the genre isn't worth searching out. Like this one. Witness the magical method of conveying the utter joy of playing music very poorly with friends.
09 September 2011
Did You Hear About The Morgans?
Romantic comedies work better when the leads are charming and attractive.
04 September 2011
All Good Things
Thoroughly creepy, thanks in large part to Ryan Gosling's performance but I'm not sure whether the ambiguous bits help or hurt the movie's impact.
15 August 2011
Limitless
Not a bad portrait of mania until the end, at which point the creators clearly reached their limit.
06 August 2011
26 July 2011
The Lincoln Lawyer
Kind of like a rejected Law and Order script (not enough twists) with a few sub-plots added on.
22 July 2011
20 July 2011
17 July 2011
16 July 2011
Battle Los Angeles
Where "Battle" is the operative word. I actually think this is one of the better "behind enemy lines" movies in quite a while, but it is very one-dimensional.
10 July 2011
Source Code
The concept isn't very far removed from a very good episode of The Twilight Zone -- with modern action movie production values (Chicago has never looked better) -- but make no mistake, this is superlative science fiction. |
08 July 2011
Spring Summer Fall Winter ... Spring
is still the best Buddhist movie I know. And re-incarnation still sucks.
05 July 2011
L' Ivresse du pouvoir
Despite the American title, this is not a comedy. Despite the classification, this is not a thriller.
03 July 2011
02 July 2011
The Mechanic
Kind of like a mediocre episode of Burn Notice stretched out to double the necessary length.
27 June 2011
The Adjustment Bureau
All believable except the romance. Blade Runner is still the best Philip K. Dick adaptation to film, but this is a worthy addition to the list.
19 June 2011
Solaris
Upon rewatching this, now in an excellent Blu-ray edition, it strikes me as a something greater than a mashup of Ingmar Bergman, David Lynch, with a tiny touch of Stanley Kubrick.
Black Death
Exhibit 349 in the case against religion run amok, and a kind of elegy for the tens of thousands of women murdered for "witchcraft" in Europe.
10 June 2011
True Grit (2010)
If there were more westerns like this, that would be reason enough for there to be more westerns.
04 June 2011
The Departed
Upon revisiting The Departed I am even more struck by the masterful adaptation of the source material, but my day job keeps reminding me that identity deletion is not nearly that easy.
25 May 2011
Howl
One might want a narrative tale, and one might not want the anachronistic animation distracting from the mystical incantations, but ultimately the material exceeds the trappings. I am with you in Rockland.
21 May 2011
Somewhere
I thought Coppola exorcised her daddy-issue ghosts with Lost in Translation. I guess I was wrong. But it has become much less interesting.
18 May 2011
16 May 2011
15 May 2011
The Illusionist
The animated Tati doesn't have the comic timing of the real Jacques. But the world is a better place with even this half an additional Hulot film in it.
13 May 2011
No Strings Attached
Above average romantic comedy, or maybe it's just Natalie Portman. Yep, that's probably it.
07 May 2011
29 April 2011
Never Let Me Go
While I am a big fan of science fiction in which there is little speculative technology (eg, Brazil), and while this story is set in a world almost precisely our own, it's really just a heartbreaking metaphor for the ways we treat one another.
27 April 2011
26 April 2011
Wall Steeet: Money Never Sleeps
It's hard not to like a movie that is ripped from the financial headlines, and uses the debate between crystalline silicon and thin film solar energy as a plot device, though the romance and family ties subplot is tacked-on nonsense. |
How Do You Know versus The Backup Plan
The right way and the wrong way to build a romantic comedy: Love your subjects and build in some tension in addition to the romantic machinations (How Do You Know), or get cynical and treat everything as a plastic backdrop (The Backup Plan).
24 April 2011
Voyage of the Dawn Treader
I guess they blew the budget on the climactic battle on the volcanic island, which is impressive, since the escape from the Lone Islands looks like a made-for-SyFy movie. |
18 April 2011
15 April 2011
13 April 2011
Fair Game
I went into it thinking "How many more movies do we need to see about Bush lying?" and it convinced that the answer is "at least this one more."
07 April 2011
04 April 2011
Megamind vs. Despicable Me
Choose your savior: romantic love or paternal love. I enjoyed Megamind more.
03 April 2011
27 March 2011
25 March 2011
24 March 2011
20 March 2011
14 March 2011
13 March 2011
Black Swan
We knew Aronofsky was a master of the psychic break. Now he has found his perfect vehicle. Fincher and the other pretenders need to take notes.
06 March 2011
Midnight FM
A nice little Korean film meditating on mass media via hostage taking serial vigilante killing.
27 February 2011
Deadline at Dawn
One of those "old" movies that surprise you and remind you that we really don't care about plot, anymore.
05 February 2011
01 February 2011
31 January 2011
17 January 2011
The Social Network
Nicely scripted but one day the story about the money and the personalities will be far less interesting than the way these technologies have changed lives. Think: navigating the oceans, the birth of agriculture, or the invention of language. |
13 January 2011
Heartbreaker (L'Arnacoeur)
Pretty people in Monaco aren't enough to make L'Arnacoeur feel like it's not missing something.
09 January 2011
08 January 2011
07 January 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)