They forgot to make the final boss fight the hardest and most dramatic one.
That’s the simplest way I can sum up why the movie feels “okay” instead of excellent. I loved the beginning of the movie, the way it set its own pace and tone very deliberately, with a long, dialogue-heavy Senate committee hearing — [...]
Taking Woodstock (2009)
Directed by Ang Lee. Starring Demetri Martin, Imelda Staunton, Henry Goodman, Eugene Levy, and Liev Schrieber.
I’m not sure what they were thinking, but I thought that opening this movie on the weekend after the Woodstock concert anniversary was one of the worst scheduling decisions I’ve seen in a while. Not the weekend of, [...]
Oh, Calcutta! is one of those Age of Aquarius theater experiences I’ve known about for some time. One comes across references to it when one delves into the 60s and 70s or the modern history of theater. I never knew exactly what it was about or why it had that peculiar title. Its main claim [...]
I’m sitting here in this all-night cafe pondering Quentin Tarantino’s career and his status as an artist who has managed to keep the conditions alive for creating the art he wants to create, because I consider myself an artist, too.
Most people will just think Terminator Salvation is boring, but it’s much more insidious than that for not being obvious in how void it is, what seems to me not just bad creativity, but void creativity, something that creates a vacuum that leaves less creativity in the world for having been introduced.
The Hangover (2009)
Directed by Todd Phillips. Written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. Starring Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha, and Heather Graham.
I enjoyed this comedy, which lived up to the expectations of word of mouth and its sustained box office appeal during this crowded peak of the summer movie season. There are [...]
An attempt to be thoughtful about a movie that has a number of acute inherent flaws, with asides into the predicament of having complete artistic freedom.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
Directed by Gavin Hood. Starring Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Will.i.am, Lynn Collins, Dominic Monaghan, and Ryan Reynolds.
The first thing I noted was that they must have been in a little bit of a rush to get the movie finished in time for its first-of-summer-season release (which will creep back to [...]
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
Directed by Jake Kasdan, Produced by Judd Apatow. Starring John C. Reilly, Raymond J. Barry, Kristen Wiig, Tim Meadows, Chris Parnell, Jenna Fischer, and cameos by an assortment of Judd Apatow regulars.
Capsule verdict: Disappointing misfire, eliciting a smattering of chuckles at best.
Ten minutes into the movie, nobody in the audience [...]
The Lake House
Directed by Alejandro Agresti. Starring Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, and Christopher Plummer.
Well, I must admit, I’m fond of time-travel romances. I like time travel stories, I like romances, so there you go. I was just trying to think about how many time-travel romance movies I’ve seen, and I thought of five off the [...]
Warning: Major plot spoilers for both.
FIREWALL (2006)
Directed by Richard Loncraine. Starring Harrison Ford, Virginia Madsen, and that blond guy from A Beautiful Mind.
I mainly went to see this movie because of the relaxed way Harrison Ford promoted it on The Daily Show. “It's a pretty good movie,” he said with a half-shrug. “And I hope [...]
More movie reviews. Many spoilers, especially for SPIDER-MAN 2.
TROY
Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
The first trailers for TROY came out last December. I remember rolling my eyes and then quipping, “The face that launched a thousand CGI ships.” I then spent the months leading up to the release of it expecting it to be sad and terrible, [...]