eric brochu

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• Zombie Lake (1981) 0.5/5

  2010-10-07 08:35

  

  captiously 2010-10-07
  0.3

• Hide and Seek (1999) 1/5

  2011-01-02 12:27

  

  http://vancouveratmain.com/hey-does-your-kids-still-want-to-play-soccer-this-year/ 2011-01-02
  0.3

• Blood Freak (1972) 1/5

  2009-10-10 21:33

  

  Aurogra from mexico 2009-10-10
  0.3

• 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

• Troll 2 (1990) 1/5

  2009-04-29 11:06

  

  2009-04-29
  0.3

• Bamboozled (2000) 1/5

  2008-04-13 13:45

  

  2008-04-13
  0.3

• Gamera vs Gyaos (1967) 1/5

  2008-02-16 21:04

  

  Godzilla, at least in his first couple of films, is iconic and even poetic -- capital-N Nature in all its awesome fury, reminding the folks of badly-dubbed Japan that they and all their tiny, easily-crushable buildings are as insects by comparison. His fellow giant monster Gamera, however, is a bizarre, jet-powered flying turtle who likes to let creepy kids ride on his back. Here he battles a giant bird that can shoot lasers from its mouth. Gamera, you suck.

  2008-02-16
  0.3

• Revolver (2005/I) 1/5

  2007-12-25 23:48

  

  Luc Besson, Guy Ritchie and Ray Liotta have all seemed a little crazy for the last, say, decade or so. Apparently, putting them all together was like a perfect storm of batshit-insane. Nothing I say can possibly prepare you for the schizoid, pretentious, Kabbalah-fueled mess of a gangster film that is Revolver. You must see it. If for nothing else than the endless scenes of Ray Liotta in his underwear under black lights, weeping and telling the voices in his head to fear him -- voices which, incidentally, are there for no fucking reason whatsoever!

  2007-12-25
  0.3

• Fire Maidens from Outer Space (1956) 1/5

  2007-11-25 23:45

  

  2007-11-25
  0.3

• This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006) 1/5

  2007-07-06 09:48

  

  How can a film with its head stuck so far up its own ass find the room to spend 94 minutes sucking Hollywood's dick? This film is an "expose" of the US MPAA ratings board as made by Kirby Dick, who clearly sees himself as a kind of Hollywood Hipster Asshole version of Michael Moore. Unfortunately, while he's as smug and hypocritical as Moore, he's nowhere near as talented a filmmaker, and all his banner waving about artistic freedom and censorship (the word is repeated roughly 800 times despite the fact the board doesn't censor movies) just comes off as the whiniest type of agitprop. A board member, we are told "lives in this multi-million dollar house" and is a Republican -- this, with a complete lack of irony, following a denunciation of the Hollywood blacklisting of the 1950s. But even a hack like Kirby Dick knows that you can't have a doc with just talking heads, so he hires a team of private investigators to follow ratings board members and go through their garbage. Because apparently, sometimes artistic freedom requires stalking people to teach them a lesson -- certainly, it's no worse than what the MPAA does. Oh, wait: it is. You fucking asshole.

  2007-07-06
  0.3

• The Girl from Monday (2005) 1/5

  2006-11-08 13:31

  

  Ever since I saw Trust (still one of my top five films of all time) over ten years ago, I've eagerly followed Hal Hartley's career. But No Such Thing felt like Hal Hartley-lite, and this just feels like the work of an imposter. It has the Hartley tropes, but they're mushy, flavorless and decidedly lacking in nutritional value. And where No Such Thing lifted from La belle et la bête, this one is so derivative of The Man Who Fell to Earth that I just felt kind of embarassed for both Hartley and Nick Roeg.

  2006-11-08
  0.3

• Shock Waves (1977) 1.5/5

  2010-10-07 08:35

  

  2010-10-07
  0.3

• Transformers (2007) 1.5/5

  2008-03-29 13:39

  

  2008-03-29
  0.3

• The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) 1.5/5

  2008-01-08 19:58

  

  I don't think there's a single performance or scene that rings true, but by God, they sure want to impress you with how much it all cost. I recently read the terrific book The Devil's Candy, about the making of this film, so I kind of had to see it, but it really is a slog.

  2008-01-08
  0.3

• The Black Dahlia (2006) 1.5/5

  2007-02-11 01:43

  

  A runaway bulldozer of a movie, colliding into campy performances and sending plot points flying right out of the film. The the third act is a head-on collision with crazy town, and everything turns out to somehow be the fault of some incidental characters we know and care nothing about. For a few brief moments, it's so stupid and over-the-top it's better than good. But mostly, it's just bad.

  2007-02-11
  0.3

• The Beach (2000/I) 1.5/5

  2006-10-15 23:42

  

  Actually, I spent most of the movie's runtime getting caught up on xkcd, so I'll let the IMDB's Titanic_Fanatic25 sum it up thusly: "whats your favorite scene of the beach?? mine is when him && Françoise are in the waterr && start making outt. veryy hot. he looks extremely good in that movie. [[especially in that part]] she is one lucky chick, dudee." Yes, yes, I'm a horrible snob.

  2006-10-15
  0.3

• Renaissance (2006) 1.5/5

  2006-10-08 00:39

  

  Beautiful, but stupid. Really, really stupid. Will the dedicated maverick cop be forced to turn in his badge but vow to stay on the case? Will the megacorp president who talks about bettering the world turn out to be... pure evil? Will the cop and the 'bad girl' fight at first and then fall for each other? If you can't guess the answer, welcome to your very first movie.

  2006-10-08
  0.3

• Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) 1.5/5

  2006-08-14 09:05

  

  What the hell was the line of reasoning that lead me to believe this movie wouldn't suck ass?

  2006-08-14
  0.3

• Duck, You Sucker! (1971) 2/5

  2010-10-23 18:48

  

  There seems to be an attempt to re-evaluate Sergio Leone's last western as, well, not a lost masterpiece, exactly, but an unfairly forgotten work, at least. But with all due respect, its not. I admire the intent -- a scathing critique of both revolutionaries and their targets, but the pacing is too languid, the action is uninspired and it's metaphors too thuddingly simply and obvious. It's bravado cynicism of the "*I* don't believe in *anything*" sort, rather than icy gaze of an jaded observer like Jean-Pierre Melville.

  2010-10-23
  0.3

• Paprika (2007) 2/5

  2009-10-10 21:33

  

  2009-10-10
  0.3

• Kabluey (2007) 2/5

  2009-10-10 21:33

  

  2009-10-10
  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

• 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

• 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

• Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977) 2/5

  2009-04-15 23:37

  

  2009-04-15
  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

• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) 2/5

  2008-05-25 22:21

  

  2008-05-25
  0.3

• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) 2/5

  2008-05-25 22:18

  

  2008-05-25
  0.3

• The Crazies (1973) 2/5

  2008-05-07 19:10

  

  2008-05-07
  0.3

• Spider-Man 3 (2007) 2/5

  2008-03-23 11:18

  

  2008-03-23
  0.3

• About Schmidt (2002) 2/5

  2007-09-09 10:53

  

  I have to say, I can enjoy slow, ponderous films quite a bit when they have something interesting to say. This one is mostly just boring, cliched, and, frankly pretty elitist -- this is a middle America populated entirely by one-dimensional characters we're supposed to chuckle knowingly at (look, he has a mullet! she talks in feel-good platitudes! heh). I guess it's good to see that Jack Nicholson can still not overact when he wants to, though here it just means he acts boring -- pretty much any decent actor his age could have done what he did with the role.

  2007-09-09
  0.3

• The Addams Family (1991) 2/5

  2007-08-23 11:06

  

  The 1960s TV version of the Addams family is my ideal of the family unit: utterly unconcerned with society's expectations and values, but completely accepting and loving. This invariably puts them at odds with the more traditional characters -- stifling, small-minded figures, concerned with appearances and threatened by the Addams' nonconformity. The movie however, takes a different approach. Here, the Addams family are the outsiders, and the audience is in the role of the normal people gawking at them. The family not only knows how odd they look, they revel in their weirdness. So, instead of being subversive, like the sitcom, it's a freakshow, albeit an affectionate one. On the plus side, though, Raul Julia and Angelica Huston are terrific as Gomez and Morticia, and Christina Ricci is perfectly cast as Wednesday (even though she's a very different Wednesday from the TV series).

  2007-08-23
  0.3

• Les Choristes (2004) 2/5

  2007-08-15 10:03

  

  "Serious" French cinema these days is inevitably either pretentious academic wanking or sappy middlebrow nostalgia. This "acclaimed" film -- kind of a Dead Poet's Society-meets-Sister Act -- is decidedly in the latter camp. What the hell happened to you, French cinema? I used to able to at least pretend to respect you.

  2007-08-15
  0.3

• Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices (1995) 2/5

  2007-07-29 15:29

  

  A rare misfire from Werner Herzog. Gesualdo was a 17th-century Italian prince, who was also an alchemist, a masochist, a murderer and a composer (not necessarily in that order). His compositions have been praised as radically ahead of their time, and his life has given rise to an entire cottage industry of lurid and implausible legends. It's easy to see why this would appeal to any documentarian, let alone Herzog. Unfortunately, while there are a few brilliant Herzog touches, most of the film looks like it could have been made by any documentarian, with Herzog touring old palaces and interviewing pompous talking heads (the choir leader, especially, is clearly more in love with the sound of his own voice than Gesualdo's music). Worst of all, though, a good third of the film is made of up performances of Gesualdo's madrigals, and they are all rather boring and indistinguishable. There are a couple of great moments, but nowhere near enough to save the film.

  2007-07-29
  0.3

• Look Back in Anger (1958) 2/5

  2007-07-16 22:46

  

  For a supposed "classic", this is a bad, bad film. So bad, in fact, that it's good, like a Plan 9 from Outer Space of socially-conscious 1950s British cinema. Based on a play respected at the time for its "realism", it combines typically artificial stage writing with an hilariously over-the-top performance by Richard Burton as the middle class-hating "angry young man". Burton's overacting is so extreme, and so sustained that it starts out painful to watch, and then becomes funny, and then becomes a special, painful kind of funny, like watching Ricky Gervais dancing in The Office. Best of all, Burton clearly thinks he's delivering the performance of a lifetime. Which he is, in a grotesque way. God, I hate "serious" theatre. But hey, at least it's better than Tape.

  2007-07-16
  0.3

• Hard Candy (2005) 2/5

  2007-06-12 00:35

  

  This horror-psycho-thriller is hard to watch, sometimes because it's so intense, and sometimes because it's so damned stagey that it reminded me of Tape, a movie I hated. I'm still not sure if it's a film about revenge and victimization dressed up with extreme violence, or an extreme violence film paying lip service to victimization and its consequences. To be honest, I'm not sure which I'd prefer.

  2007-06-12
  0.3

• Prince of Darkness (1987) 2/5

  2007-05-31 11:28

  

  For some reason, John Carpenter's movies are more fun to think about than to watch. This one could have been awesome -- a group of scientists and theologians investigate a mysterious artifact that may contain Satan. Or is it an alien? Or some kind of time traveller? And it's pretty slick and well-made, considering the low budget. But ultimately, it's manages to be both iconic and vaguely unsatisfying. Just like Assault on Precinct 13 and Big Trouble in Little China. And Escape from new York. And They Live. And so on.

  2007-05-31
  0.3

• 2046 (2004) 2/5

  2007-03-22 15:36

  

  I really wanted to like this movie. I know a lot of people did, or claim to. It's beautifully shot and features various beautiful women in beautiful, chic dresses living in a beautifully shabby hotel in 1960s Hong Kong. It's a good-looking movie. But it lost me. It's just so taken up with its own elegant, oblique, art-house-romance view of the world, that I could never get past the artificiality of the characters and the story. The constant droning narration and pointless, ponderous sci-fi elements didn't help either. However, Christopher Doyle's gorgeous cinematography makes the movie worth watching, for a while, at least.

  2007-03-22
  0.3

• Fils, Le (2002) 2/5

  2007-03-08 22:14

  

  The Son. Yet another overrated European film in the self-consciously "artistic" style of the past ten years or so -- lots of hand-held cameras and drab location shots. This one follows a character who is (intentionally) a complete cypher. "Follows" is really the word -- a good third of the film is spent staring at the back of his head while he walks around. The whole thing is deliberately difficult and opaque, but all the showy, high-mindedness contempt for style can't disguise the fact that the situation and characters are utterly implausible and the film really doesn't seem to have anything at all to say about them.

  2007-03-08
  0.3

• Snakes on a Plane (2006) 2/5

  2006-08-30 10:13

  

  Manufactured Hollywood camp that somehow manages to make me question Sam Jackson's coolness. Still, it's a lot more entertaining than Superman Returns.

  2006-08-30
  0.3

• Superman Returns (2006) 2/5

  2006-07-29 09:53

  

  Superman is not a terribly interesting superhero, but did the whole movie really have to be so bland? A monosyllabic Superman rescues a complete non-entity Lois Lane and her mouth-breathing kid. Even Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor is dishwater-dull.

  2006-07-29
  0.3

• Logan's Run (1976) 2.5/5

  2011-01-02 12:27

  

  2011-01-02
  0.3

• District B13 (2004) 2.5/5

  2010-10-24 23:36

  

  So in District B13, the Paris of 2010 is overrun with murderous politicians, walled suburbs, and gangs armed with parkour and military-grade hardware. Meanwhile, the real Paris of 2010 is overrun with striking workers protesting a slight increase in the retirement age. That's not even close, District B13. Not even close.

  2010-10-24
  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

• Control (2007) 2.5/5

  2009-10-10 21:33

  

  2009-10-10
  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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Rocket Science (2007) 2.5/5

  2008-08-24 20:13

  

  2008-08-24
  0.3

• Bangkok Dangerous (1999) 2.5/5

  2008-04-05 11:35

  

  2008-04-05
  0.3

• Gamera vs Guiron (1969) 2.5/5

  2008-02-25 00:24

  

  2008-02-25
  0.3

• Poltergeist (1982) 2.5/5

  2008-02-17 02:16

  

  I remember when I was a kid, this movie was a huge deal. Maybe if I saw it at the time, there would be more of a nostalgia factor. But seeing it for the first time now -- it's not a bad film, but it's not a particularly ambitious or challenging one, either. There are some jolts and jumps, but never anything too upsetting, and the film is careful not to ever do anything that would drive anyone away.

  2008-02-17
  0.3

• The Boondock Saints (1999) 2.5/5

  2007-11-09 22:43

  

  A movie that feels like somebody gave an ambitious -- but not terribly original -- film student a few million dollars. There is exactly one good thing about this movie -- Willem Dafoe's charismatic turn as a brilliant but utterly eccentric FBI agent. The rest... at best, it's a second-rate Tarantino rip-off. At worst, a second-rate Punisher rip-off. Never unwatchable, but rarely compelling.

  2007-11-09
  0.3

• Addams Family Values (1993) 2.5/5

  2007-08-26 20:59

  

  The first Addams Family movie suffers for trying (and failing) to emulate the TV show. The second one mostly forgets the TV series altogether and goes for the macabre, black-humoured gags of the original New Yorker cartoons by Chas Addams. It's still not very good (the main storyline about a murderous nanny marrying Fester for his money is a bore), but there are a lot more dark chuckles to be had.

  2007-08-26
  0.3

• Days of Being Wild (1991) 2.5/5

  2007-08-20 09:43

  

  I used to think I liked Wong Kar Wai movies. More recently, though, I've come to the conclusion that what I really like is his cinematographer Christopher Doyle, and his leading lady, Maggie Cheung. These are the ones doing all the emotional heavy lifting, not the ponderous, humourless WKW. Not that Wong is a bad director or writer (except when he is, like in 2046), but he's really a one-trick pony: as soon he steps outside his "sensitive bad boys and the jealous women who love them" safe zone (as he does with the ending of this film), it's obvious he has no idea what to do. If he hadn't hooked up with Maggie and Chris early on, I doubt anybody outside a few Hong Kong aficionados would know his name. Also, is it overly cynical of me to speculate that WKW really makes these movies just to get laid? Because I always think that while I'm watching his films, even the ones I like.

  2007-08-20
  0.3

• Curse of the Aztec Mummy (1957) 2.5/5

  2007-07-27 23:11

  

  (Thanks to Blim's Evil Film School for screening this "classic" piece of luchadore insanity!) El Ángel is a silver-masked Mexican wrestling superhero, who single-handedly takes on rubber snakes, a portly middle-aged scientist and some inept goons, with the eponymous Aztec mummy mostly around to bat clean-up in the last five minutes of the film. El Ángel wears a mean cape, bounds up stairs three at a time, and wrestles like Esau himself, but somehow manages to repeatedly get captured and forced into the world's lamest death traps. (Escape from one involves rolling his head a few inches to the right, and another requires him to phone a small boy to come over and poke him with a stick while he dangles from a light fixture.) It's all inane, inept and totally entertaining.

  2007-07-27
  0.3

• Road House (1989) 2.5/5

  2007-07-22 15:50

  

  Boobs, bullets, bar fights and a bare-chested Patrick Swayze as a mullet-wearing world-famous bouncer/philosopher. Plus, Ben Gazzara as the oddly wry villain with a monster truck, and enough unintentional hilarity and homoeroticism for any three Joel Schumacher films. Truly, this is the movie with something for everyone. "Pain don't hurt," sayeth the master. No, Patrick, it sure don't.

  2007-07-22
  0.3

• Death Wish (1974) 2.5/5

  2007-06-24 16:40

  

  Or, "Un justicier dans la ville" in French, which is an awesome name that maybe could have been used for Deathwish 2: Vigilante in the City. Actually, given its crypto-fascist reputation, it is a surprisingly entertaining and effective piece of entertainment, and actually has non-trivial things to say about law and lawlessness. In a way, I think its the ambiguity of the film's attitude that has led to its reputation -- all those westerns about good-guy gunfighters coming into town and killing the bad guys draw far less criticism simply because they depict vigilante justice as an unabashed and unquestionable good. Not that Death Wish as all that complex: all the muggers Charles Bronson kills are clearly bad guys. Though none of them are despicable as the rape-and-murder gang that sets him off in the first place (and whom, interestingly, he never comes close to tracking down or punishing).

  2007-06-24
  0.3

• Cars (2006) 2.5/5

  2007-06-02 11:03

  

  The Incredibles is a brilliant film, and an impossible act to follow, no question. And that just makes Cars still feel even more like an artistic misstep for Pixar -- a bland, safe, kid-friendly cash-machine, complete with fart jokes and characters that look like they were designed as happy meals toys first. It's frustrating not because it's bad, but because you know everyone involved can do better.

  2007-06-02
  0.3

• Blinkende lygter (2000) 2.5/5

  2007-05-02 21:49

  

  Flickering Lights. This Danish pastiche of US indie films isn't going to win any awards for originality, but as wacky gangster comedy psychodramas go, it's fairly entertaining, even if it doesn't really add up to much in the end. Though there are a couple of bits of "wacky" xenophobia that leave a sour taste behind when it's over.

  2007-05-02
  0.3

• Idiocracy (2006) 2.5/5

  2007-02-04 00:16

  

  A real cult has grown up around this film already, based on the studio's decision to order reshoots, then shelve it, then dump it straight to DVD with no publicity. In some quarters, it's been hailed as a buried masterpiece, and The Guardian (predictably) posits a conspiracy based on the supposed subversive power of the film's anti-corporate message. Unfortunately, while it has some pretty funny moments, there are some long, dry stretches of Hollywood hokum between them, and the satirical jabs are hardly devastating. Which is kind of disappointing -- Mike Judge really nailed the whole "laughing at retards" thing when he did Beavis and Butt-Head.

  2007-02-04
  0.3

• Radiant City (2006) 2.5/5

  2006-10-11 09:39

  

  This is probably the most artistically interesting movie I saw at the film festival, using a mockumentary-style approach to looking at Calgary as a stand-in for suburbanization generally. Unfortunately, it kind of turns to shit in the last 20 minutes with the "ha ha we tricked you" moment, following which the actors break character and start to talk and talk and talk and talk. And talk.

  2006-10-11
  0.3

• Root of All Evil? (2006) (TV) 2.5/5

  2006-10-02 23:54

  

  A Channel 4 TV show in which Richard Dawkins attacks religion and makes arguments against both extremism and religious moderates (who he chides for being both irrational and inconsistent). His feelings on the subject are very similar to my own, but the film is basically just an abridged version of his books on the subject, with a few far-too-brief interviews with practitioners of various stripes.

  2006-10-02
  0.3

• Hunger (2008) 3/5

  2010-11-08 20:09

  

  Unfortunately, I come in with no knowledge of the historical events fictionalized here, and the film has no interest in actually engaging the viewer. In fact, it's so stark, insular, and obsessed with the bloody price of martyrdom that it kind of becomes a kind of IRA Passion of the Christ. I can appreciate it as an exercise (and there's clearly genuine talent here), but not as a film.

  2010-11-08
  0.3

• Constantine (2005) 3/5

  2010-10-23 18:43

  

  You know, if you ignore the comics the movie is based on and pretend that Keanu is playing a two-fisted exorcist anti-hero who happens to be named John Constantine, it's really not too bad a film. Some good set-pieces, well-cast supporting roles (especially Tilda Swinton as the angel Gabriel) and a nice gothic-pulp look. However, if you look at it like Hollywood's once chance to adapt everything that is awesome in Hellblazer, it's a crushing disappointment.

  2010-10-23
  0.3

• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) 3/5

  2010-08-24 09:48

  

  2010-08-24
  0.3

• Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story (2007) 3/5

  2010-08-07 23:17

  

  2010-08-07
  0.3

• 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

• Standard Operating Procedure (2008) 3/5

  2009-10-10 21:33

  

  2009-10-10
  0.3

• Mongol (2008) 3/5

  2009-10-10 21:33

  

  2009-10-10
  0.3

• The Darjeeling Limited (2007) 3/5

  2009-10-10 21:33

  

  2009-10-10
  0.3

• Fiend Without A Face (1958) 3/5

  2009-10-10 21:30

  

  2009-10-10
  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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Role Models (2008) 3/5

  2008-11-14 20:21

  

  2008-11-14
  0.3

• Paranoid Park (2008) 3/5

  2008-10-12 17:15

  

  2008-10-12
  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

• Triad Election (2006) 3/5

  2008-08-24 20:15

  

  2008-08-24
  0.3

• My Kid Could Paint That (2007) 3/5

  2008-08-04 20:16

  

  2008-08-04
  0.3

• A Colt is my Passport (1967) 3/5

  2008-08-04 19:21

  

  2008-08-04
  0.3

• The Jerk (1979) 3/5

  2008-07-11 17:32

  

  2008-07-11
  0.3

• Where the Green Ants Dream (1984) 3/5

  2008-06-15 22:02

  

  2008-06-15
  0.3

• American Gangster (2007) 3/5

  2008-05-07 19:10

  

  2008-05-07
  0.3

• Devdas (2002) 3/5

  2008-04-22 21:56

  

  2008-04-22
  0.3

• Predator (1987) 3/5

  2008-03-16 11:29

  

  2008-03-16
  0.3

• Be Kind Rewind (2008) 3/5

  2008-03-02 11:39

  

  2008-03-02
  0.3

• Manhattan (1979) 3/5

  2008-02-16 20:04

  

  I've seen this movie before. More than once, even. And loved it. In fact, it was on the short-list of my Top 100 Films list. So imagine how disturbed I was to find that some reason, this time around, I'm not sure I even liked it. I wonder if the perpetually overrated Allen's films are becoming as irrelevant as the man himself. It's certainly an increasingly uphill struggle for me to care about his rich, self-absorbed, pseudointellectual bobo baby boomers, even in his best films.

  2008-02-16
  0.3

• Apocalypto (2006) 3/5

  2008-01-20 19:39

  

  An odd film, in an odd key. Clearly conceived as a straight-up action-adventure yarn, and it delivers on that front with spectacular chase and fight scenes. But it is also clearly fascinated by its own setting -- the declining Mayan empire -- with long scenes of family life, the Mayan economy and the details of life in the jungle. Unfortunately, fascination doesn't equal insight, and in the end, we get an interesting, but off-balance actioner that can't quite hold up under the weight of its ambitions.

  2008-01-20
  0.3

• Hellboy (2004) 3/5

  2008-01-08 19:52

  

  Entertaining movie with some brilliantly-directed scenes, and Ron Perlman is brilliant as Hellboy, but the story and editing are so choppy that by the end you pretty much have to give up on making any sense of what's going on or how anybody got anywhere. Still, del Toro is unquestionably a brilliant filmmaker, and I'm really looking forward to Hellboy 2.

  2008-01-08
  0.3

• A Better Tomorrow II (1987) 3/5

  2007-09-30 20:50

  

  Ramps up the action, the melodrama and the sheer preposterousness of the first movie, frequently to an overbearing degree. The action scenes are spectacular, but the rest of the film takes frequent trips into insane soap-opera WTF?-land. Still entertaining, but John Woo and Chow Yun Fat would go on to do a couple of films that were a whole lot better. "If you have any dignity, apologize to the rice RIGHT NOW!"

  2007-09-30
  0.3

• Mystic River (2003) 3/5

  2007-09-10 10:58

  

  The first two-thirds -- where you don't know where it's going and can enjoy the performances and direction -- are excellent. But then we get to a completely and utterly implausible third act, followed by a series of tacked-on epilogues that rob the movie of any remaining poignancy or ambiguity. (And am I the only person that thinks Sean Penn isn't much of an actor? I never once thought I was seeing a character rather than "superstar actor Sean Penn". And not just here...)

  2007-09-10
  0.3

• Breach (2007) 3/5

  2007-09-09 10:41

  

  Interesting little film, based on the real case of an FBI mole. Chris Cooper completely dominates the film with his entertaining portrayal of the mole Robert Hanssen as a prickly devout Catholic, but we never actually get his point of view -- it's all from the point of view of the agents building the case against him. At the end of the film, I had no idea why or how Robert Hanssen would come to be "the worst spy in history", and I didn't feel anyone involved with the film (including Chris Cooper) did, either.

  2007-09-09
  0.3

List generated by WP Movie Ratings.