Quick & Dirty: Movie Reviews

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August, 2010
Animal Kingdom (2010) 3.5/5
2010-08-29 10:58

2010-08-29
0.3
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) 3/5
2010-08-24 09:48

2010-08-24
0.3
Inception (2010) 4.5/5
2010-08-07 23:18

2010-08-07
0.3
(500) Days of Summer (2009) 3.5/5
2010-08-07 23:18

2010-08-07
0.3
Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story (2007) 3/5
2010-08-07 23:17

2010-08-07
0.3
Winter's Bone (2010) 4/5
2010-08-07 23:17

2010-08-07
0.3
Toy Story 3 (2010) 4/5
2010-08-07 23:11

The Incredibles > WALL·E > Ratatouille > Toy Story > Finding Nemo > Toy Story 3 > Up > Monsters Inc > Toy Story 2 > Bug’s Life > Cars
2010-08-07
0.3
February, 2010
Moon (2009) 4/5
2010-02-15 22:17

Man, if there's one microgenre I really have a soft spot for, it's low-budget "hard" science fiction films, where story and character are... not unimportant, but secondary to exploring ideas in meticulous detail. Moon is the story of the only occupant of a lunar base (a brilliant performance by Sam Rockwell), and what happens when he's suddenly *not* the only occupant. It borrows hugely and openly from 1970s sci-fi, but its ideas are its own, and it's fascinating to watch them unfold.
2010-02-15
0.3
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) 4.5/5
2010-02-07 17:38

Awesome movie, but what does the title mean? Shouldn't the second one, where Bourne threatens his former masters, be the ultimatum, and this one, where he kicks their collective asses, be the supremacy? It's a good thing it has some of the best action and suspense set pieces of all time to distract me from this, or I might get annoyed.
2010-02-07
0.3
The Bourne Supremacy (2004) 3.5/5
2010-02-03 12:39

The weakest of the Bourne trilogy, though I still like it more than the best James Bond movie. For one thing, there's actual suspense -- the conclusion doesn't feel preordained and Matt Damon's grim efficiency reminds us that the stakes are serious, a sharp contrast to Bond's glib sociopathy. It also takes place in something closer to the real world than the Bond films, though it's increasingly hard to buy the consequence-free international carnage being wrought by US interests.
2010-02-03
0.3
The Bourne Identity (2002) 4/5
2010-02-03 12:31

I picked up the Bourne trilogy on sale and I've been watching them in one-hour chunks before bed. The first one is definitely the most conventional, though it still has a lot of grit and a distinctive style, not to mention some pretty awesome stunt work.
2010-02-03
0.3
The White Ribbon (2009) 4/5
2010-02-02 12:23

In a small, pre-WWI German town, repression, cruelty and hopelessness grip the townsfolk like a vise, and mysterious violence starts to erupt among the generation that would grow up to create National Socialism. Knowing Michael Haneke's previous films, I was expecting something bombastic. While there's definitely a take-home message, what I found fascinating was the dissection of how the groundwork for such an ideology is laid.
2010-02-02
0.3
December, 2009
Sherlock Holmes (2009) 3.5/5
2009-12-27 21:19

I'll be honest: I was very pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed Sherlock Holmes. Sure, the villainous plot was pretty boring and the female characters/beards were written so thin they barely existed, but Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law made an awesome Holmes and Watson, the action scenes rocked (and actually advanced the story!), and the film oozed all kinds of style. Screw fidelity to the source material, this was just the kind of crazy entertaining crime flick I was hoping for from Guy Ritchie.
2009-12-27
0.3
Avatar (2009) 2.5/5
2009-12-27 17:15

Just finished Avatar. Graphics rocked, awesome level design, but the cut scenes were pretty tedious. Still, kept me involved until the fight with the final boss. Wait... what? We were watching a movie!?
2009-12-27
0.3
Let the Right One In (2008) 4.5/5
2009-12-27 16:55

A grim, unromantic and genuinely creepy vampire movie, probably the best of its sort since the 1979 Nosferatu, which was also grim, unromantic and genuinely creepy.
2009-12-27
0.3
Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans (2009) 4/5
2009-12-27 16:43

With only the barest resemblance to the original Bad Lieutenant, this oddball blacker-than-black comedy about the "bliss of evil" might as well have been called Werner Herzog's Grand Theft Auto III, with Nic Cage channelling Klaus Kinsky impersonating Ray Liotta playing Tommy Vercetti.
2009-12-27
0.3
Up in the Air (2009) 3.5/5
2009-12-26 22:03

How good is George Clooney in this movie? Well, he plays an ultra-successful professional hatchet man who's just looking for someone who can look past his extraordinary wealth, status and good looks to accept him for the borderline-sociopathic asshole he is -- and he's still totally sympathetic. Dammit.
2009-12-26
0.3
The Hangover (2009) 3.5/5
2009-12-26 16:52

2009-12-26
0.3
October, 2009
Drag Me To Hell (2009) 3/5
2009-10-25 16:13

Sam Raimi isn't the most subtle of directors, but he sure can direct a scene. Thing was, after the truly embarrassing Spider-Man 3, I was starting to have serious doubts about his ability to direct a movie. Fortunately, there's no real doubt that Drag Me To Hell is pretty well-done, even though the over-the-top teen horror movie isn't a genre I'm especially fond of.
2009-10-25
0.3
A Serious Man (2009) 4.5/5
2009-10-25 15:54

in 1967, a mild-mannered physics professor starts to find his life unravelling by inches, but instead of complaining or giving in, he tries to understand God's plan by visiting three rabbis. Funny, cruel and infused with a bleak Jewish existentialism, even for a Coen brothers movie, this film has a lot to unpack. I need to see it at least once more to really decide what I think of it, but right now, I think it's kind of brilliant.
2009-10-25
0.3
Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) 3.5/5
2009-10-20 20:52

At the height of the cold war, the US builds the ultimate supercomputer and puts it in charge of the nation's nuclear arsenal. What could possibly go wrong? This really isn't a great movie, but it has a lot going for it. It's got great 70s art direction, Edith Head doing the costumes and lots of loving shots of state-of-the art tape drives and orange monochrome terminals. It also has a pretty great way of dealing with the fact that most of the movie involves people interacting with a computer -- the computer action is set in a great ultra-70s-modern control room, which allows for appropriately imposing hardware and room for the human characters to yell and run as necessary. It also has a satirical bite, and a classic downer ending. Unfortunately, it never rises above the typical (lazy) Hollywood anti-science, isn't-logic-heartless sci-fi tropes, always a pet peeve of mine.
2009-10-20
0.3
Crank (2006) 3.5/5
2009-10-20 20:44

Hitman Jason Statham is injected with a deadly poison, and only adrenaline can slow it down. But only enough to buy him the time he needs to get revenge and/or a cure. Not quite the demented masterpiece of its sequel (Crank: High Voltage), but still a loopy and highly entertaining action film.
2009-10-20
0.3
Kabluey (2007) 2/5
2009-10-10 21:33

2009-10-10
0.3
Standard Operating Procedure (2008) 3/5
2009-10-10 21:33

2009-10-10
0.3
Blood Freak (1972) 1/5
2009-10-10 21:33

2009-10-10
0.3
Mongol (2008) 3/5
2009-10-10 21:33

2009-10-10
0.3
Bigger Stronger Faster* (2008) 4/5
2009-10-10 21:33

2009-10-10
0.3
Point Break (1991) 4/5
2009-10-10 21:33

2009-10-10
0.3
Henry V (1989) 4/5
2009-10-10 21:33

2009-10-10
0.3
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford... 3.5/5
2009-10-10 21:33

2009-10-10
0.3
Pusher (1996) 4.5/5
2009-10-10 21:33

2009-10-10
0.3
Control (2007) 2.5/5
2009-10-10 21:33

2009-10-10
0.3
Paprika (2007) 2/5
2009-10-10 21:33

2009-10-10
0.3
Hero (2004) 3.5/5
2009-10-10 21:33

2009-10-10
0.3
The Darjeeling Limited (2007) 3/5
2009-10-10 21:33

2009-10-10
0.3
Stranger Than Paradise (1984) 4/5
2009-10-10 21:33

2009-10-10
0.3
Galaxy Quest (1999) 3.5/5
2009-10-10 21:33

2009-10-10
0.3
Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) 3.5/5
2009-10-10 21:30

2009-10-10
0.3
Fiend Without A Face (1958) 3/5
2009-10-10 21:30

2009-10-10
0.3
August, 2009
District 9 (2009) 4/5
2009-08-31 13:36

2009-08-31
0.3
Inglourious Basterds (2009) 5/5
2009-08-31 13:34

2009-08-31
0.3
Kitten with a Whip (1964) 3/5
2009-08-12 22:38

The closest I ever came to seeing anything starring Ann-Margret was her tedious lullaby-singing appearance on The Flintstones. I still have only the vaguest idea why she was famous enough to merit inclusion on the show -- it's definitely not her acting. But aside from her scenery chomping, Kitten is actually one of the better drive-in juvenile delinquent films I've seen. Margrock is a teenaged reform school runaway who breaks into the home of a local politician, and then uses the compromising position of her very presence to blackmail him. Soon he's forced into helping out A-M's whole gang, lead by a bizarre Zen-monkish beatnik-thug. It's pretty ridiculous, but at least it tried hard to entertain, which is enough to put it ahead of a lot of these kind of films.
2009-08-12
0.3
The Hurt Locker (2009) 4.5/5
2009-08-04 22:03

2009-08-04
0.3
July, 2009
Brüno 3/5
2009-07-31 20:41

What I liked about the Bruno character in Da Ali G Show were the segments that allowed Sasha Baron-Cohen to use his shallowness to make the arrogant and clueless confortable enough to expose their own vapidity. But instead of going that direction, the Bruno movie uses the character much more for shock value and confrontation. Problem is, Borat already did that, and did it a lot better. Bruno is funny -- sometimes very funny -- but it feels like a missed opportunity.
2009-07-31
0.3
Public Enemies (2009) 3/5
2009-07-31 20:39

A lot of people seemed to be bothered by shooting a period gangster movie with handheld digital, but I think it was incredibly effective, especialy during the action sequences. There's nothing I'm less interested in seeing than that burnished, buttery glow we usually see in movies set in the 1920s and 1930s. Unfortunately, the cinematography is the best part of the movie. Particularly bad is the central relationship between Depp's Dillinger and the dishwater-dull Billie Frechette -- there is simply nothing in Marion Cotillard's underwhelming performance that would make you think Dillinger would ever notice her, let alone make her the central figure of his life.
2009-07-31
0.3
June, 2009
Independence Day (1996) 1/5
2009-06-26 06:44

So after actually rather enjoying seeing things get smashed in Cloverfield, I thought maybe it was time to finally see Independence Day. I was wrong. There is never a time to see Independence Day.
2009-06-26
0.3
Reprise (2006) 2/5
2009-06-26 06:44

Mark my words, "write what you know" will be the epitaph of the 20th century. A young novelist-filmmaker made this film about two young novelists and their awesome girlfriends and wacky circle of friends. It's pretty much the same too-cool celebration of writerly angst you've seen and read before, with plenty of Dogme 95 and "homages" to Truffault thrown in.
2009-06-26
0.3
Wendy and Lucy (2008) 4.5/5
2009-06-21 18:01

En route to Alaska, a nearly-destitute Michelle Williams has her car break down in small-town Oregon, and then loses her dog. There are no quirky townspeople or saccharine melodrama or grand statements, just one person in one place in one situation, but the story is so well-told, I was completely engrossed from the opening scene to the credits.
2009-06-21
0.3
Cloverfield (2008) 3/5
2009-06-21 18:01

So on the one hand, I really hate movies that expect you to care what happens to a bunch of boring yuppie douchebags just because they're cool and pretty and have nice clothes. On the other, giant monsters destroying major cities is undeniably cool. (Just try to deny it -- can't be done.) The fact that said giant monster kills said douchebags is what makes this passable entertainment. That, and the scene where the dbags are standing around in the street filming the monster while a fat dude does the smart thing and hauls ass in the other direction.
2009-06-21
0.3
Rachel at the Wedding (2008) 3.5/5
2009-06-13 21:03

Alright, it's not my favourite genre -- the earnest-but-voyeuristic indie family melodrama, where everybody is just so troubled and good-looking and bobo as fuck -- but it's well-made (Johnathan Demme!), and my iPhone got me through the most interminable scenes. I'm glad I resisted the urge I had for the first 20 minutes or so to shut it off. (Also, future band name: "Bobo as Fuck".)
2009-06-13
0.3
Up (2009) 4/5
2009-06-06 21:40

2009-06-06
0.3
Lars and the Real Girl (2007) 2.5/5
2009-06-06 21:21

I think it's to Ryan Gosling's credit that his characters is not far more annoying. He plays a lonely, small town sad sack who turns to a realistic sex doll for companionship, which he starts treating like a real person. This is pretty creepy, but the movie is much more interested in being "heartwarming" and "whimsical", so instead of having him committed, the entire town inexplicably has nothing better to do than indulge Lars while he works through his none-too-subtle personal issues. The one saving grace is that Gosling manages to make Lars and his interactions with the doll sympathetic instead of cloying, but that only makes the movie watchable, not good.
2009-06-06
0.3
Le Samourai (1967) 4.5/5
2009-06-06 21:02

Incredible piece of 1960s-issue existential Eurocool. Alain Delon is perfect as the ultraprofessional, icy-cool hit man who drifts through chic jazz clubs and rainy Parisian streets with a trenchcoat, a gun and a blue fedora. But it all starts to unravel as he comes into conflict with both the police and his employer. An absolutely fantastic piece of filmmaking that respects and rises above its genre origins.
2009-06-06
0.3
Sukiyaki Western Django (2008) 2/5
2009-06-06 20:51

Prolific Japanese crazyman Takashi Miike's take on the spaghetti western mixes gunslingers and martial arts in a comic-book universe of ridiculous marksmanship and phonetically-spoken English, but ultimately doesn't amount to much. The problem is, I never felt Miike has any special affection for -- or understanding of -- the genre, and as a result, the film seems both wrongheaded and smug. Casting Quentin Tarantino as a gunslinger-sage doesn't help.
2009-06-06
0.3
Volver (2006) 4/5
2009-06-06 20:34

In this campy (but heartfelt) melodrama of well-meaning mother-daughter murder teams and ghosts working as assistant hairdressers, the thing I found most implausible is that someone that looks like Penelope Cruz could ever be dirt poor or single. But that's probably missing the point. I've come to the conclusion that I probably lack the sensitivity to ever fully get caught up in Pedro Almodovar's stories of romantic Spanish poverty, but I'm enough of a film geek to totally enjoy his best work, such as this.
2009-06-06
0.3
May, 2009
Star Trek (2009) 3.5/5
2009-05-23 23:35

2009-05-23
0.3
RocknRolla (2008) 3/5
2009-05-18 18:54

I fully believe that despite his decade-long string of flops, Guy Ritchie is a truly talented filmmaker who has some great films ahead of him. This is not one of them. Don't get me wrong: it's fun, but it's just a little meh, too.
2009-05-18
0.3
Killer of Sheep (1977) 4/5
2009-05-18 18:45

Meticulous, haunting and beautiful. This is a film in the vein of Italian neo-realism, but it also comes across as very American (in a good, good way). It's essentially a series of short vignettes about one working-class family in Watts, Los Angeles. Some scenes seem like jokes or anecdotes, some are moments of characterization and some are just small everyday moments. And it all somehow fits together.
2009-05-18
0.3
Crank: High Voltage (2009) 4/5
2009-05-06 05:54

2009-05-06
0.3
Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy (1996) 2/5
2009-05-03 11:38

I was watching this movie (again) and wondering if it might not have been better if Dave Foley was in it for more than five minutes (again). And where is Dave Foley now? Doing nude scenes in Uwe Boll movies, that's where. Life is funny, isn't it?
2009-05-03
0.3
Jurassic Park (1993) 3/5
2009-05-03 11:29

It's effective entertainment, and the scenes with the raptors hunting are great, but without the 1993 impressiveness of the computer graphics, it's not a terribly meaty film -- more War of the Worlds than ET. And don't get me started on the film's cartoonish anti-science message.
2009-05-03
0.3
April, 2009
Troll 2 (1990) 1/5
2009-04-29 11:06

2009-04-29
0.3
The Getaway (1972) 3/5
2009-04-26 20:30

An entertaining enough chase movie, and Steve McQueen is always great at being Steve McQueen, but even with Walter Hill and Sam Peckinpah behind the camera, this seems too safe, too studio, too out-of-touch. After seeing the period's thoughtful, existential road movies, like Vanishing Point, Point Blank and the incredible Two-Lane Blacktop, this slick, happy-ending actioner feels all the more like a missed opportunity.
2009-04-26
0.3
Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977) 2/5
2009-04-15 23:37

2009-04-15
0.3
Adventureland (2009) 3.5/5
2009-04-14 21:58

2009-04-14
0.3
The Lives of Others (2007) 3.5/5
2009-04-05 21:50

I recall this film, about a 1980s Stasi agent and the writer he is assigned to surveil, was praised to the heavens when it came out, but I wonder if anybody is still championing it now. The problem I had is that there are some great intellectual ideas here, and a great performance by Ulrich Mühe, but the filmmaking is so heavy-handed and ponderous it feels like the life is being squeezed out of it. Not that it's a bad film overall, and I *do* see why it was so praised, but sometimes I think the Tasteful Depiction of Important Ideas has spelled the death of European cinema.
2009-04-05
0.3
March, 2009
Secret Honor (1984) 2.5/5
2009-03-23 22:38

Do you love the over-the-top scenery devouring at the end of There Will Be Blood, but wish that it had gone on for 90 minutes and also that it had been about Richard Nixon? If so, this is the movie for you. Philip Baker Hall plays a cartoonish, ranting, borderline-insane Nixon in what is essentially a one man play. It's directed by Robert Altman, so it has some cinematic cred, but I've been reading a lot about Richard Nixon lately, and I've never really seen him as the kind of guy who spent his post-Watergate years drinking, talking to his dead mother, barking like a dog and raving about global conspiracies. I guess it was probably gratifying to liberals who lived through the Nixon era to see him portrayed that way, though.
2009-03-23
0.3
Watchmen (2009) 3.5/5
2009-03-15 22:12

2009-03-15
0.3
Vanishing Point (1971) 4/5
2009-03-15 21:50

It's kind of hard to talk about this movie without comparing it to it's arty, existential road-movie doppelganger, Two-Lane Blacktop. So I will do just that, and say that TLB does the existentialism better, but this one has a lot more action. They're both great movies, but this isn't the one that sticks with me.
2009-03-15
0.3
Le Cercle Rouge (1970) 4.5/5
2009-03-15 21:33

Alain Delon, the epitome of 1960s Euro-chic cool, is a thoroughly professional master criminal who is released from prison and is drawn, more by fate than will, into planning and executing an elaborate heist. At the same time, he and his partner are being hunted by an equally brilliant and aristocratic detective. The centrepiece is the incredible heist sequence, which is real-time and dialogue-free, and which piles cool upon cool until all you can do is gape at it's awesomeness.
2009-03-15
0.3
The Orphanage (2007) 3.5/5
2009-03-15 21:20

A really elegant and unnerving horror film from Spain. Instead of shocks and gore (which I always find more funny than scary), it tries to scare you by creating characters you care about and putting them into creepier and creepier situations. Not every scene worked for me, but the ones that did were as effective as any I've seen in a horror movie.
2009-03-15
0.3
Grease (1978) 4/5
2009-03-15 21:06

Alright, I'll admit the highlight was watching it with Janelle while she gleefully told me how each scene shaped her younger self. But I still dug it. What can I say? I really do have a soft spot for musicals -- even when they're not great films per se. Only problem is, I found Olivia Newton-John to be kind of a bore (sorry, Janelle). I wanted to see more of Didi Conn's rebel-dork Frenchy! (Which I hear I can in Grease 2. Hmmm...)
2009-03-15
0.3
February, 2009
Coraline (2009) 3.5/5
2009-02-16 13:11

2009-02-16
0.3
Man on Wire (2008) 4.5/5
2009-02-15 13:45

Incredible documentary about Philippe Petit's 1974 tightrope walk between the WTC twin towers. Hearing it described, it sounds like a stunt, but seeing the planning and execution turns it into something transcendental -- a kind of insane dream art. Particularly as seen through the eyes of Petit's then-girlfriend, who is a primary narrator. My only real complaint is that the movie is lacking decent footage of the walk itself, but in a way, that just lets it live more strongly in the imagination, where it belongs.
2009-02-15
0.3
Ace in the Hole (1951) 4/5
2009-02-15 13:35

It amazes me just how modern Billy Wilder's movies seem. While most of Hollywood was mired in turgid melodramas, good-guy/bad-guy westerns and musicals -- few of which have aged very well -- Wilder's unsentimental dissection of sensationalist journalism is so sharp and nuanced that it could have served as the template of season 5 of The Wire. In fact, maybe it should have.
2009-02-15
0.3
January, 2009
The Wrestler (2008) 4/5
2009-01-21 13:36

The story is disappointingly unimaginative, but the acting and direction more than compensate. Mickey Rourke is the titular over-the-hill professional wrestler, but within the first two minutes you forget you're watching Rourke -- it's just Randy "The Ram" up there on screen, living the life it must have taken decades to get to. An absolutely incredible performance.
2009-01-21
0.3
Revenge of the Nerds (1984) 3.5/5
2009-01-21 13:36

Okay, it's really not a great film, but it's goofy, entertaining and easy for me to relate to. Plus, it has a kick-ass theme song by The Rubinoos. So go ahead, put us down -- one of these days we'll turn it around.
2009-01-21
0.3
Frost/Nixon (2008) 3.5/5
2009-01-11 04:33

It's not a great piece of filmmaking, but I've been reading a lot about Nixon lately, and I think this movie really nailed his character: he's like an evil Spock.
2009-01-11
0.3
Australia (2008) 2/5
2009-01-11 04:24

My girlfriend is Australian, which kind of obligates me to see this. It actually starts out not too bad, with a campy, over-the-top half hour of outback heroes and moustache-twirling villains. But then the earnestness sets in, and it becomes an endless slog which leaves you waiting for the Japanese to show up so that Darwin can get blowed up and the damn thing can finally end. (And for the record, Janelle liked it only slightly more than me, and only because she likes Nicole Kidman slightly more than me.)
2009-01-11
0.3
December, 2008
Con Air (1997) 4/5
2008-12-21 17:49

I hadn't seen this movie since it was in theatres, and I forgot just what a glorious masterpiece of stupidity it is! There is not a single line that isn't grandiose or a performance that isn't over-the-top, and there's not a hint of subtlety in sight. With a cast including Nick Cage, Steve Buscemi, John Cusack and John Malkovich, who all competing in some kind of secret scenery-chewing contest, the whole thing is excessive and gratuitous, and so cheerfully idiotic, it can't help but be entertaining.
2008-12-21
0.3
The Big Heat (1953) 3/5
2008-12-21 17:29

Fritz Lang-directed gangster movie with a very young Lee Marvin as a cold-blooded thug. Glenn Ford plays an honest but vengeance-minded cop who is determined to take down the mob after they kill his beloved wife. The film is slick, violent, and so fast-moving that entire gunfights are glossed over with a single line of dialogue -- the better to propel the main story along. However, it's pretty standard for the genre: solid, but never groundbreaking.
2008-12-21
0.3
I'm Not There (2007) 3.5/5
2008-12-21 17:23

It's pretty rare for a preposterous high-concept gimmick to pay off, but here it just barely manages to. Six people, including Heath Ledger, Christian Bale and Cate Blanchette, inhabit various aspects of the Bob Dylan persona. It's pretty audacious, but Bon Dylan has always been such a self-mythologizer that a conventional biopic could never capture all the aspects this one does.
2008-12-21
0.3
Slumdog Millionaire (2008) 3.5/5
2008-12-01 23:40

2008-12-01
0.3
November, 2008
Highway 61 (1991) 4/5
2008-11-26 22:34

One of my favourite Canadian movies. Writer Don McKellar is a small-town Ontario barber who ends up on a road trip across the US with roadie Valerie Buhrgear and a corpse in a coffin, pursued by a creepy bingo-playing American who thinks he's Satan. The directing and story-telling are maybe a little sloppy and low-rent in places, but the movie has a charmingly offbeat DIY attitude a lot of 16mm heart. Director Bruce McDonald would team up with McKellar again to make the brilliant gen-X TV series Twitch City.
2008-11-26
0.3
Synecdoche, New York (2008) 4.5/5
2008-11-18 10:44

My glib analysis is that it's a meditation on mortality, narcissism and the inability of art to capture life -- three things that I think Kaufman sees as nearly identical. That's kind of a disservice to the movie, though. It's a lot deeper and more obscure than that. I think I'll need to read and think more about it, but right now, I'm definitely in the camp that says it's a kind of masterpiece of unlubricated mindf*ckery. (Though I saw it with Tyson and Gillian, with whom I usually agree, and they were much less impressed.)
2008-11-18
0.3
Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) 4/5
2008-11-14 20:22

2008-11-14
0.3
Role Models (2008) 3/5
2008-11-14 20:21

2008-11-14
0.3
Clash of the Titans (1981) 2.5/5
2008-11-08 16:50

I love, love stop motion, especially Ray Harryahausen, and the effect here are probably some of his best. However, there is a point at which the film around the effects becomes slick and/or dull enough that stop-motion, no matter how good, can't keep up. Clash is just on the wrong side of that boundary -- it's simply impossible for me to believe in the creatures here in the way I could in the less-slick but more-compelling Jason and the Argonauts, say.
2008-11-08
0.3
Ms. 45 (1981) 4/5
2008-11-08 16:35

A really odd Abel Ferrara-directed revenge flick set in NYC at its scuzziest. Raped twice in one night, a pretty, mute seamstress kills her attacker. Terrified at first, she keeps the body in her bathtub while disposing of it bit by bit. Pretty soon, though, she takes the rapist's gun and starts hunting other "bad" men, but her evolving moral code makes more and more men targets. We follow her descent in increasingly creepy and unnerving set-pieces, until we find our anti-heroine dressed in a nun's habit kissing her .45 while planning a massacre. The movie's not all that graphic, but it is unnerving, and like most of Ferrara's other films, has a ratio of two parts exploitation flick to one part art film. Which means it's pretty much right up my alley.
2008-11-08
0.3
October, 2008
Body of Lies (2008) 3.5/5
2008-10-29 21:12

Terrible title notwithstanding, this is Ridley Scott's best films in years. Set in the middle of the war on terror, I was somewhat afraid it would be didactic, but it's really more of a straight-up political thriller with slight pretensions of contemporary relevance. Which is just how I like my political thrillers, actually. Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe turn in strong performances, but are blown away by Mark Strong as the charismatic and frightening head of Jordanian intelligence. Not a masterpiece, but definitely worth seeing.
2008-10-29
0.3
Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) 5/5
2008-10-23 23:11

2008-10-23
0.3
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) 4/5
2008-10-15 23:09

2008-10-15
0.3
Paranoid Park (2008) 3/5
2008-10-12 17:15

2008-10-12
0.3
Burn After Reading (2008) 3.5/5
2008-10-05 11:41

The Coen brothers have such an amazingly strong track record that it's hard not to feel a little disappointed when a new film is less than a masterpiece. Burn After Reading is less than a masterpiece, but it's more than just an average comedy, and totally entertaining.
2008-10-05
0.3
September, 2008
Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) 4/5
2008-09-25 21:58

2008-09-25
0.3
Gremlins (1984) 3/5
2008-09-25 21:57

2008-09-25
0.3
Tropic Thunder (2008) 3/5
2008-09-02 18:28

Not a great movie, but the steady hand of director Ben Stiller manages to compensate for the grating, unfunny un-performance of star Ben Stiller.
2008-09-02
0.3
Rambo (2008) 2.5/5
2008-09-01 21:30

Here's Rambo's greatest strength and greatest weakness: from the title alone, you know exactly what you're gonna get. And you get it. Sly Stallone single-handedly kills dozens of deserving foreign baddies. It delivers. Unfortunately, it's also all you're gonna get. (Unless you're really, really into bad CGI blood and gore, in which case, boy howdy, you are in for a treat.) None of this is bad or unsurprising. It's just a little... empty-leaving.
2008-09-01
0.3
August, 2008
Triad Election (2006) 3/5
2008-08-24 20:15

2008-08-24
0.3
Pickpocket (1959) 3.5/5
2008-08-24 20:14

2008-08-24
0.3