Five minutes into James Cameron’s new sci-fi epic, Avatar, I thought I had been transported to the George Lucas Prequel Tram Tour of Computer Generated Hullabaloo. As the lush forests full of giant trees and crazy critters passed before my 3-D glasses covered eyes, as floating mountains and towering waterfalls rushed into view, I sighed thinking this supposed breakthrough in filmmaking was another soulless love affair with CGI from an egotistical and nonsensical director. But I was wrong. Dead wrong. …
Category: Reviews
Oh yeah! Award season is here, which means films that weren’t released wide or screened to critics may end up on our docket. It also means we’ll be posting reviews which aren’t as “timely”. Instead of posting the full review and enduring the reprimands of the calendar conscious, we’ll post a cute little snippet. If you like what you see, you can choose your own adventure and click the blurb to read the whole thing. Or don’t. What do we …
Precious is an exercise in endurance. It’s a film intent to look you in the face with no intention of sparing any modicum of pain, hurt and unbearably selfish horror. Even the title itself is a tragic blow– a name with inherent meaning that’s been melted under the acidic wash of fate to become a mockery. And yet, it’s also a reminder of individually infinite value. So Precious goes: an experience almost wholly unpleasant but one where, by the end, …
The tidal wave of New Moon hysteria hit early this morning as thousands of women of all ages, along with 25 guys, streamed into screenings starting at midnight, all hoping the second film in The Twilight Saga would be as tasty or better than last year’s Twilight. Judging by the squeals and the oohs and the ahhs, I’d say 99 percent of the audience was satiated with enough gooey Edward and Bella romance to last until June 2010 when The …
So now might be time to relinquish my right to continue as a bear wrestling, hairy chested, card carrying male. I unapologetically enjoyed New Moon… all in spite of itself. Qualified: “enjoyed” doesn’t mean squealing, wooing, heart-stopping delight, but rather pleasant surprise at Chris Weitz’ relatively true handle on overwrought teen angst and the brief action beats that break it up. In short, Weitz directs a film that, despite a ploddingly joyless eternal love between vampire Edward and heroine Bella …
The Blind Side, the true life story of a wandering “orphan” taken in by a wealthy Tennessee family, works on the premise of clever subterfuge. The film is being marketed as a rags-to-riches sports success tale, but ultimately, it’s not that as much as it is a dollop of inspirational suggestion on matters of humanity, economic responsibility and showing a “blind side” to race; all in a football slicked shell. Director John Lee Hancock’s (The Rookie) adaptation of the book …
I’m not going to waste your time or space on AATM with an elaborate review of 2012. All you need to know is Roland Emmerich continues his 13 year end-of-the-word-destruction fetish, this time linking the end of the Mayan long count calendar on December 21, 2012, to solar flares and aligned planets that spell sayonara to Mother Earth via earthquakes, volcanoes and massive tsunamis. And, in the end, this almost three-hour movie has nothing to offer but a few mildly …
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 …