Movie Reviews
The Spiderwick Chronicles
I wanted to like this but, try as I might, I just couldn’t get into it. It’s based on a series of children’s books, and I might check one out, but faeries and goblins are not really my thing. It didn’t give me time to get into its world; before I knew it I was being overwhelmed by CGI critters that weren’t all that interesting. (Nick Nolte as the Big Bad Goblin might have been scarier if ... Read more »
Horton Hears a Who!
First reaction: Why does everything have to be so friggin’ huge these days? The great Chuck Jones did this in 1970, staying exactly with the Dr. Seuss story, narrated by the great Hans Conried, and it is a classic. But it’s 2008, this is CGI animation, and it has megastars Jim Carrey and Steve Carrell. Naturally, it’s all over the place, full of frantic action, ... Read more »
Nim’s Island
Somebody at IMDb said this was like Indiana Jones for little girls. Maybe, but I think the better parallel is Romancing the Stone, that wonderful, unlikely match of adventure and humor that was such a big hit in the ‘80s. Both stories involve a female novelist who writes adventures and ends up having an adventure herself. In this one, though, the novelist is ... Read more »
Drillbit Taylor
I had prepared this line before I ever saw the movie, in case it sucked: “Now I understand why Owen Wilson tried to off himself.” Yeah, I know, it’s cruel, but what the hell? And sorry to say, if I’d been involved in this movie in any capacity I’d be thinking about the rope, the gas pipe, or pills. Like any comedy, except the very worst, there were a few laughs. ... Read more »
Iron Man
So what do you expect from a big summer superhero action movie, of which this is the first of 2008? Action, of course, but you might also wish for wit, an appealing character or two, some funny situations and some real ones (just to set off the unreal stuff that’s bound to happen in a comic book movie), an intelligent script (within the limits of the genre), and maybe even some attention ... Read more »
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
I think I may have to just give up on comic book movies. Even if they’re well-reviewed. Even if it means that I might miss the occasional one that has some wit, some humor, like Iron Man, that is onto itself and understands how frickin’ goofy the whole thing is. I mean, what the hell has happened to our culture, that we spend multiple ... Read more »
Righteous Kill
This movie has a surprise ending, so I really can’t say too much about it. I began to suspect something about halfway through, but Lee said it fooled her, and I’ll admit I didn’t guess correctly what the surprise would be. That’s enough about that. The attraction of this otherwise fairly standard cop story would be the idea of De Niro and Pacino working together. All those Oscar wins and ... Read more »
Lakeview Terrace
The husband is white, the wife is black. They move into a very nice neighborhood but they soon find out that the man next door is a racist cop. He’s controlling of his children, his neighborhood … everything around him. He tolerates no differing opinions on any subject. He is the macho sort who is constantly proving his manhood by needling those around him in a way that it’s almost ... Read more »
Quarantine
A remake of a Spanish film of 2007 called REC that got very good reviews at Rotten Tomatoes … and one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. For that reason I’d like to see REC (not yet available on DVD) to see what could be made of the promising premise that this movie totally wrecked. The idea: A super-rabies ... Read more »
Passengers
Despite the presence of the lovely porcelain doll Anne Hathaway and the talented Patrick Wilson (who we just saw in Lakewood Terrace, and who was so brilliant opposite Ellen Page in Hard Candy), this is a dud. The direction is terrible, with long silences in most scenes. In a picture that is supposed to build suspense, this is fatal. ... Read more »