Archive for October, 2007 (cont'd)

Poltergeist (1982)

Monday, October 15th, 2007

I already looked in the Yellow Pages. Furniture movers, we got. Strange phenomenon, there’s no listing.

Conceived and shot virtually in tandem with E.T., Poltergeist is that film’s loud and scary cousin. Whatever the controversy about who actually directed it, this tight, nifty suburban ghost story is unquestionably a Spielberg movie. He produced, wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay, leaving his trademarks all over the place. The archetypal middle-class family living in an ever expanding sprawl of housing tracts shares a lot of DNA with the less happy families in Close Encounters and E.T.

Go toward the light!

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Director:  | Released:  | 114 min. | Rated:  | Genres: 

Perfect Stranger (2007)

Tuesday, October 9th, 2007

Show me a beautiful woman, I’ll show you a man who’s tired of fucking her.

The director of this misbegotten chunk of lifeless cinematic afterbirth is James Foley, previously responsible for Glengary Glen Ross, a brilliant adaptation of David Mamet’s play. That earlier work was top drawer and it still had half as many virtues as this movie has vices. Perfect Stranger smacks you across the face with plot holes so huge that it would be an insult to your intelligence if only you could be bothered to care.

Perfect Stranger

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Director:  | Released:  | 109 min. | Rated:  | Genres: 

Ed Wood (1994)

Tuesday, October 9th, 2007

You people are insane! You’re wasting your lives making shit! Nobody cares! These movies are terrible!

Purists could probably spend a lively weekend detailing the factual errors found in Tim Burton’s comic biopic of 1950s schlockmeister Edward D. Wood, Jr., but these killjoys would be completely missing the point of this affectionate tribute to those perpetual outsiders whose dreams far outstrip their talent.

Ed Wood

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Director:  | Released:  | 127 min. | Rated:  | Genres: 

The Lookout (2007)

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007

Everything’s a story. Stories are what help us make sense of the world.

As the screenwriter of Get Shorty and Out of Sight, writer/director Scott Frank knows his way around a caper movie, which helps give him a sure hand when dealing with the bank heist elements of The Lookout, but it’s the human drama that elevates this film to more insightful level. This is a character study framed in the traditional structure of a crime story and somewhat more successful in the first element than it is in the second.

The Lookout

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Director:  | Released:  | 99 min. | Rated:  | Genres: 

Sergeant York (1941)

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007

Mighty good shootin’ for a man in his liquor, ain’t it?

In the early forties, Gary Cooper seemed to have a corner on the market for squeaky-clean, All-American biographies. After playing Medal of Honor recipient Sergeant Alvin York, he would go on to play Yankee legend Lou Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees. While the latter movie was a shallow, deeply clichéd bit of treacle, Howard HawksSergeant York manages to get under the skin of the pious country boy who managed to single-handedly take out a German machine gun nest and take 138 prisoners with only seven men.

Sergeant York

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Director:  | Released:  | 134 min. | Rated:  | Genres: