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These are the posts for the year 2006 of the common era.

Joyeux Noël (2005)

Tuesday, December 19th, 2006

Tonight, these men were drawn to that altar like it was a fire in the middle of winter. Even those who aren’t devout came to warm themselves.

The events of Joyeux Noël would scarcely be believed if the movie was a work of pure fiction. The greatest strength of Christian Carion’s film is that, if it were mere fiction, the film might actually make you believe the incredible events. The story is crafted carefully and the characters well-drawn, so that when the central event of the film occurs, their motivations and actions are believable within the context that they take place.

Joyeux Noel

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Director:  | Released:  | 116 min. | Rated:  | Genres: 

Superman Returns (2006)

Tuesday, December 12th, 2006

Gods are selfish beings who fly around in little red capes and don’t share their power with mankind.

For about the first forty minutes, Superman Returns looks and feels like a worthy successor to the 1978 classic, right up until the point Superman actually returns, then things start to go wrong.

Superman Returns

The opening rescue, involving a space shuttle and airliner full of press (including Lois Lane, of course), is exactly what you expect and want from a Superman movie. If only you could say that about the rest of this film.

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Director:  | Released:  | 154 min. | Rated:  | Genres:  | Franchise: 

The Da Vinci Code (2006)

Tuesday, December 12th, 2006

The mind sees what it wants to see.

Let me get this straight. Jesus got hitched, had a kid and all of Western civilization conspired to cover it up?

Whatever.

The Da Vinci Code

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Director:  | Released:  | 149 min. | Rated:  | Genres: 

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)

Sunday, November 26th, 2006

…just because some man in a red coat gives you a sword it doesn’t make you a hero…

C.S. Lewis’s much-loved fantasy cycle shares no small amount of DNA with J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. Both were Oxford fellows who belonged to the same literary group, the Inklings. Tolkein was also primarily responsible for Lewis’s conversion to Christianity. The seven-part Narnia cycle is quite a bit more accessible than the Rings trilogy, however, and the movie version shares a similar relationship to Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Tolkein’s work. This is a Lord of the Rings movie for people who don’t want to sit through Jackson’s nine-hour trilogy.

The Chronicles of Narnia

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Director:  | Released:  | 143 min. | Rated:  | Genres:  | Franchise: 

The Dead Zone (1983)

Thursday, November 9th, 2006

Blessed me? God’s been a real sport to me!

I don’t know why, but over the years, the best films based on the works of Stephen King have been those based on material that didn’t fit into the stereotypical mold of the horror-meister, like Stand by Me, Misery and David Cronenerg’s adaptation of The Dead Zone. The straight spook-and-slash flicks have been cranked out by hacks who lean entirely on the gooey red stuff and toss King’s characterization and texture over the side. On the other end of the spectrum was Stanley Kubrick’s arid interpretation of The Shining, where the director’s distance from the material could be measured in light-years.

The Dead Zone

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Director:  | Released:  | 103 min. | Rated:  | Genres: 

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Wednesday, November 1st, 2006

It’s not the years, honey. It’s the mileage.

As a standalone movie, judged apart from its lesser sequels, Raiders of the Lost Ark is a pure, unfiltered dose of joyful escapism. Rarely has the medium of film been so successfully used for the purpose of pure entertainment. Free from director Steven Spielberg’s tendency for suburban navel-gazing, cute kids and distant parents, as well as producer George Lucas’s later bloated mythic pretensions, Raiders tosses overboard every piece of narrative flab as the story hums along like a well-tuned V-8 engine.

Raiders of the Lost Ark

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Director:  | Released:  | 115 min. | Rated:  | Genres:  | Franchise: 

Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)

Wednesday, October 25th, 2006

It seems they destroy people by granting their dearest wishes, as has been the way of the devil since God created the world.

A lyrical but unsatisfying adaptation of Ray Bradbury‘s classic novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes is interesting more for the possibilities that were squandered than for the end results. Bradbury adapted the script himself, meaning that the novel’s language is kept intact. Unfortunately, Jack Clayton’s pedestrian direction, coupled with corporate meddling from Disney, undermine any artistry found in the author’s prose.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

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Director:  | Released:  | 95 min. | Rated:  | Genres: 

Link:

Hitchcock once remarked that “television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.”

The psychology of Alfred Hitchcock « The Neurophilosopher’s weblog

Having reviewed a large number of Hitchcock films, I thought my gentle readers might enjoy this analysis of the director’s films from another perspective.

Judgment at Nuremburg (1961)

Wednesday, October 18th, 2006

You know, there’s one thing about Americans. We’re not cut out to be occupiers. We’re new at it and we’re not very good at it.

Stanley Kramer’s second courtroom drama starring Spencer Tracy in as many years is mostly an actor’s tour de force, but surprisingly not for the film’s nominal stars, Tracy and Burt Lancaster. Both of these veterans step back and let a handful of others take center screen. The talent pool is so deep in this film that the fifth-billed actor, Maximilian Schell, took home a Best Actor Oscar, the deepest that award has gone into a film’s “bench.”

Judgment at Nuremburg

The film is a heavily fictionalized version of the actual Judges Trial during the Nuremberg Trials after World War II. (more…)

Director:  | Released:  | 186 min. | Rated:  | Genres: 

United 93 (2006)

Monday, October 9th, 2006

Of the four aircraft hijacked that day, United 93 was the only one that did not reach its target. It crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania at 10:03am. No one survived.

Despite the highly speculative nature of the scenes set aboard the ill-fated flight, nothing about Paul Greengrass’s United 93 rings false. The heroics of the titular plane’s doomed passengers are not hyped-up or Rambo-ized, but carry a sufficiently believable air of fear and desperation to let you believe that, if it didn’t happen exactly this way, the real events were not far off.

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Director:  | Released:  | 111 min. | Rated:  | Genres: