The trends of horror have finally come back to what I like. For too long horror films were tongue in cheek – even low-budget films didn’t take themselves too seriously. I thought that the death knell had finally been sounded for horror when PG-13 movies became all the craze. But it turns out that maybe … Continue reading
I hated Ju-On, and I hated the remake, The Grudge. Both were directed by Takashi Shimizu, who has made a cottage industry of retelling the same story about a ghostly curse in various sequels and direct to TV films. I hated Ju-On because I felt like I wasn’t needed – the film has utterly no … Continue reading
What I remember most about Brokeback Mountain is how beautiful it is. The movie in my mind’s eye is a steady succession of gorgeous scenery – majestic mountains and lonely plains, rivers and streams and long, endless highways. Ang Lee tells his sad love story perfectly with just the scenery of the American West. Which … Continue reading
This review could be considered to contain spoilers if you are not familiar with the original King Kong. Ie, if you have arrived on our planet within the last three days.There’s no point in comparing Peter Jackson’s King Kong to the original. The 1933 movie is pretty close to perfect, a film that still works … Continue reading
Syriana is like the coolest social studies class you ever had. It’s fascinating, and it feels completely real and true, but in the end it’s also a touch academic. Stephen Gaghan won an Academy Award for his script to Traffic, so it’s no surprise that Syriana feels in many ways like Traffic 2: What Else … Continue reading
Chris Columbus’ film adaptation of Rent begins perfectly, with the cast lined up on a dark stage, singing the show’s signature number, Seasons of Love. The song has been moved from its spot on stage, and here it creates an ideal portal through which to enter the story. It’s also the most stylized moment of … Continue reading
The video game industry rakes in billions and billions of dollars, but it seems like Hollywood hasn’t really exploited it properly. Sure, we’ve seen a bunch of video game adaptations, but not only are they uniformly bad, they’re sort of missing the point. There’s this huge subculture of gamers whose pockets seemed to be stuffed … Continue reading
You should know that if, after seeing Walk the Line, you want to buy Johnny Cash albums you’ll have to go to the country section of your local record store. I say that because as I left the screening of the biopic I realized most of the movie had tried to keep Cash as far … Continue reading
With the fourth film in the series, the Harry Potter films may have set a real record – it’s the first franchise where each movie is better than the last one for this long. A lot of the credit must go to the source material. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was, at the … Continue reading
Cillian Murphy looks good in a dress. He has the body to pull it off – all sinew and bone, with a waist that makes you wonder how he manages to eat a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup without causing ridges in his belly. He’s what they call passable, and I think that’s the word I … Continue reading