I won’t lie: Back in September when I watched the trailer for The Fourth Kind (and posted it for Trailer Tuesday), my man parts shrunk and I had to do the All-Bran 10 Day Challenge just to cleanse myself from the measure of scariness the short preview walloped on my psyche. Frankly, I was a little perplexed, because I generally find the whole aliens and alien abduction conversation completely and unequivocally ridiculous. I’m sure my alien atheism probably will piss …
Category: Reviews
Director Robert Zemeckis has a lot to live up to. His motion capture adaptation of the perennial holiday ghost story A Christmas Carol has 150 years of being realized, re-born and re-interpreted again and again. If you’ve been alive at any point since 1843, you probably have your favorite iteration, ranging from the original publication to the stage plays to the 1951 film classic (winner!). It’s clear Robert Zemeckis realized this when he approached his wowie tech version of A …
Forget aliens, vampires, and werewolves. Screw zombies and gremlins. And don’t even think about Nessie, Bigfoot or Freddy Krueger; Paranormal Activity scares the crap out of viewers by asking the simple and uncomfortable question: What happens when you sleep? One thing is for certain, after watching this movie last weekend in a theater packed with squealing girls and laughing dudes, not much happens when I sleep. Because I don’t anymore. I’m too busy looking for demons that are going to …
Maurice Sendak’s beloved children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are, published in 1963 and awarded the Caldecott Medal in 1964, is comprised of ten sentences and follows a misbehaving boy’s imaginary journey to a mysterious land where the inhabitants look like a mishmash of birds, trolls, bulls and humans. I would submit there are not many adults or kids who haven’t read Sendak’s masterpiece, but the question I’ve always had is how do you turn a narrative so small, yet …
Let’s be frank right from the start: Couples Retreat is the kind of movie you can appreciate and enjoy when you’re sitting in the drive-thru at McDonald’s wondering what one dollar Redbox rental will go nicely with your Double Quarter Pounder, pound of fries and cattle trough-sized soda. It’s not a terrible show and has a few funny bits, but its best digested with no expectations, and also while inebriated with sugar and cholesterol. The tragedy of Couples Retreat is …
The Coen brothers can be obtuse filmmakers: operating as if to apply their master’s touch on mainstream films solely for building the studio goodwill needed to produce the films they’re really interested in making. Such is the case with A Serious Man. It’s not mainstream. It’s not even midstream. Critics will love it, but the general audience won’t see it and those who do will find it totally, inaccessibly boring. Which doesn’t mean it’s bad- it just means A Serious …
Bright Star is what used to be surefire Masterpiece Theater bait. A serious, deliberate and restrained piece of lushly designed period romance and tragedy. A film where moments and vistas swirl around its centerpiece stars, all managed with a steady and deliberate directorial hand. All said in today’s bombastic, spoon-fed world of cinema… that’s some boring crap. And yet, it’s like comparing Bach to Beatles. Where most mainstream films feel like they’ve got a bouncy hook and melody to bring …
First, a confession: Open a film with a vast expanse of stars and you’ve instantly grabbed my inner geek by vice grip right where it counts. Put a knobby starship plowing through that expanse of stars to regions unknown and you’ve won my goodwill. Hello, Pandorum. As the most recent big screen addition to the grime-crusted house deep space sci-fi morphed into circa 1979, German director Christian Alvart’s Pandorum manages to kick off in disorienting fashion, nicely setting up unanswered …