You may be the Chosen One, mate, but this is a whole lot bigger than that.
The last Harry Potter movie (the Half-Blood Prince) was the first one to leave me genuinely cold when it was over. The first part of the film seemed to fritter about with various pieces of business until finally getting down to brass tacks in the last 30 minutes or so. I had to wonder if the connective tissue between these scenes was more apparent in the printed word and just didn’t translate readily to the screen.
I’m your brother and you ask me that?
Raging Bull is an unforgettable portrait of man who seemed to lack the capacity and imagination to ever be happy. It’s not a film you watch to be uplifted or reassured about the human condition. The most pleasant thought you can take away from the story of Jake La Motta (Robert DeNiro) is how fortunate you were not to be one of his friends. Or him.
Stacked next to La Motta, DeNiro’s other great role for director Martin Scorcese, Travis Bickle, is a poster child for well-adjusted contentment. Read the rest of this entry »
I don’t think I want to know you very well. I don’t think you’re going to live much longer.
Never complain too much when it’s your turn to get lunch for your coworkers, especially when you happen to work for the Central Intelligence Agency. It might save your life when someone decides to exterminate you and your coworkers.
It’s a matter of professional integrity! No girl wants to marry a doctor who can’t tell if a man’s dead or not!
What do you do when the lead actor gives a good performance, but he’s still just all wrong for the movie? Robert Downey, Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes is lively, colorful and fun to watch, but ultimately failed to make me think of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
In the end, Guy Ritchies’ take on the Holmes mythos is a handsomely executed, entertaining action movie with a Victorian setting, but every time “Holmes” stepped on screen, I kept expecting him to strap on an iron suit and start fighting terrorists.
You know your father was Captain of a Starship for 12 minutes. He saved 800 lives. Including your mother’s and yours. I dare you to do better.
Almost since the days of Star Trek: The Next Generation in the mid-eighties, the powers that be at Paramount had been threatening to do a new Star Trek television series or film that would follow the hallowed characters of the original series through their early days at Starfleet Academy, sort of a Star Trek version of Muppet Babies. However, the idea of casting younger actors in the iconic roles of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy always seemed to carry the faint whiff of sacrilege, like a female pope or eating a cheeseburger with mayonnaise.
Yep, Universal Pictures has announced that the Coen brothers‘ slacker classic
will debut on the high-def format as of August 16 of this year.
How do we inspire ourselves to greatness when nothing less will do?
Invictus deals with two subjects alien to many Americans: African politics and rugby. After seeing it, I felt I understood just a bit more… about African politics. Rugby remains a complete mystery to me. It still seems like a bunch of drunk farm boys trying to steal someone’s chickens. I firmly believe it was invented in a courtroom to explain to a judge why the defendants had been chasing each other through the mud in their underwear.
Whatever its origins, the game served Nelson Mandela’s purposes in helping to unite his deeply divided nation. Read the rest of this entry »
Squirrel!
What has always amazed me about the combined output of Pixar Animation is not just the consistent quality of the storytelling, but how different each film is from all the others. The Incredibles was as little like Cars as it was different from WALL-E. Disney’s traditional animation since The Little Mermaid, while often highly accomplished, has a certain sameness to it. With the exception of The Lion King, every film in that canon seems to have a heroine that resembles Belle from Beauty and the Beast.
Up continues Pixar’s proud tradition of breaking its own mold with a charming film that takes a touching story of an old man’s promise to his late wife and effortlessly combines it with a giddy child’s fantasy. Read the rest of this entry »
What are you gonna do about it?
Ehhh… probably something stupid.
Good, but you’ve already done that.
Dreamworks Animation has always labored in the considerable shadow of Pixar. With the exception of the original Shrek, their output has had its merits but they have never matched the relentless consistency of Disney’s seemingly unstoppable CG animation house. I don’t know if they have turned that corner, but with How to Train Your Dragon, they have finally produced a film that belongs in the same league as The Incredibles and WALL-E. Read the rest of this entry »
Don’t try to frighten me. You don’t know how.
Rollerball is one of those movies that, once you dig down past the disco-era cheese, you might find very thoughtful and prescient science-fiction. On the other hand, you might just find another layer of that cheese. Norman Jewison’s 1975 fable of full-contact sports gone insane dares you not to take it seriously, to dismiss it as merely a more cerebral cousin of Logan’s Run.
