Movie Reviews
Drag Me to Hell
Scary movies are a hard sell for me. Since Linda Blair vomited pea soup, the holy grail of these stories is grossness. These scenes no longer have the power to shock, though you may grimace. The art of scaring audiences with subtlety seems to be almost lost. The standard devices in a spook story is to take a little bit of The Exorcist, a little bit of Read more »
Land of the Lost
This movie seems to have been constructed from cast-off bits of other movies—the parts other writers deemed too stupid to include in their already fairly stupid plots. Will Farrell plays the most unappealing, obnoxious, idiotic character to be found even in his own portfolio of assholes, which is quite an asshole portfolio. At one point he is swallowed by a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and a bit ... Read more »
The Hangover
I laughed. (Whether or not you will laugh is something I can’t predict, so in line with my policy of never recommending a comedy, reporting only whether or not I laughed: I laughed. Quite a lot. And I hadn’t expected to laugh, which makes it even better.) The situations were hilarious, as three guys on a bachelor party spree in Vegas unwittingly take some roofies ... Read more »
Public Enemies
A few weeks ago it was Jesse James, tonight it’s John Dillinger. Pick your scumbag. I know that movies creating semi-heroic myths about people who were, in reality, worthless, murdering pieces of shit can yield fantastic results, as in Bonnie and Clyde. But they are a hard sell to me. It helps if I don’t know too much about the criminal’s actual crimes; I knew ... Read more »
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
Boy, did I ever nail this one. When I heard that the classic film starring Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw was being remade by Tony Scott, script by Brian Helgeland, I just had to see the original again, which turned out to be even better than I remembered it. I also made a few predictions about this one, and I’m batting a thousand.
I said it would be more action-packed. In the ...
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My Sister’s Keeper
What was this movie doing at the drive-in? I’m not complaining, really I’m not, but I have never seen a real tear-jerker at the drive-in. I’ve seen some serious dramas, like The Departed, but ever since I was a teenager going with friends to dusk-to-dawn 5-movie marathons the flicks playing have tended to feature giant radioactive ants, creatures from outer ... Read more »
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
About halfway through it really dawned on me, what a remarkable achievement this series is. I can’t think of a single thing in the history of cinema to compare it to. By that I don’t mean that this series is the best that’s ever been done—though it is damn good—but that we’ve never seen a trio of actors grow from children to adolescents to young adults playing the same ... Read more »
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Very few franchises can survive Installment #3, and this isn’t an exception. It is lovely to look at, as pretty much all computer animation is these days, but the plot didn’t involve me at all. The only thing I remembered from the first movie was an ingenious sequence with a squirrel and an acorn. Very funny. Apparently everybody else thought so, too, because in this one the squirrel and ... Read more »
A Perfect Getaway
When I say this is a better-than-usual thriller involving people out in the wilderness in mortal danger for their lives, you should bear in mind that the bar for that sub-sub-genre of scary movie has been set very, very low. That said, I have to say I enjoyed it up until the usual last ten minutes, when events blast their way over the top and into la-la land. But before that, the ... Read more »
Inglourious Basterds
Quentin Tarantino, from the times I’ve seen him on talk shows, seems to be the consummate asshole. He’s an asshole who knows how to make movies, though, and this is another amazing entry in his very small oeuvre. I must commend him for having made one of the few action-oriented films I’ve seen lately where the director has the confidence to let his camera linger, with no distracting moves, ... Read more »