Movie Reviews
The Mist
Stephen King may be the best story teller of his generation. His imagination is awesome. He writes two kinds of story. One sort is thoughtful, character-driven tales that draw you in by making you care about the people involved, like The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile (both directed by Frank Darabont, who directed this one, ... Read more »
The Stepfather
In 1987 a pretty darn good thriller came out, written by Donald E. Westlake, who also did the fantastic The Grifters. It had a very scary, very original psychopath as the central character. This man’s obsession was nothing new: He wanted a perfect family. His solution when his family turned out less than perfect, as they all eventually do, was nothing new, ... Read more »
The Invention of Lying
How’s this for a Coca-Cola commercial: “It’s mostly brown water and sugar, but it doesn’t taste so bad. Of course, it tends to make your children obese.” Or on the side of a bus, for Pepsi: FOR WHEN THEY’RE OUT OF COKE. This is advertising in the world created by Ricky Gervais, where no one can lie, where they don’t even understand the concept of lying, it’s as ... Read more »
Live Free or Die Hard
Nothing you see here regarding computers and/or telecommunications is real, it’s all bullshit. Everything you see concerning the ability of a human body to recover, or even survive, after impacting the ground at 90 miles per hour or being hit by a speeding car or jumping out of a car travelling at 70 miles per hour is bullshit. (Did you know that landing on the roof of a car after falling ... Read more »
Fido
I don’t quite know what happened to this film. Box office figures from IMDb show that it basically had no theatrical release, though the reviews were mainly positive (70% at Metacritic). The cast are all good actors. It didn’t quite work for me, but it was a close call, and I know many other people loved it. All I can figure is it may have been the victim of a ... Read more »
Law Abiding Citizen
The events portrayed in this movie are often referred to as “Taking the law into your own hands.” I don’t think that’s accurate. When you go out to avenge some great wrong without the help of the police and the courts, you are ignoring law entirely. You become your own law, and it’s because the law did not grant you justice. Bear in mind that “law” and “justice” are two entirely different ... Read more »
Black Sheep
“There are 40 million sheep in New Zealand, and they’re pissed off!” I never saw the cult classic, Night of the Lepus, in which giant bunny rabbits terrorize Arizona, but I understand it was played straight. This one isn’t, thank god. Mutant sheep on a remote station (what they call a ranch Down Under) in New Zealand turn carnivorous and our heroes must prevent ... Read more »
Vacancy
Taken on its own B-movie terms, this is a nice little thriller. A man and a women with car trouble check into a motel late at night. They pop in a tape that’s lying on the video deck and see a violent scene, people apparently being killed. They soon realize the murders are happening in the very room they are in. Whoa! Sounds pretty familiar, right? Well, sure. It’s a scary movie about ... Read more »
Paranormal Activity
I can’t help it, this is the sort of story I just eat up. Not the story the movie tells (though it’s a good one), but the story of the movie. The writer/director, Oren Peli (who???) had never made a movie, but he figured, How hard could it be? So he wrote a scenario—there never was a real script, he had his actors improvise—bought a video camera, and shot the ... Read more »
Tideland
Could a Terry Gilliam film possibly be as bad as what the critics were saying? This movie had a few champions, but you could count them on one hand and have lots of fingers left over. Yeah, The Brothers Grimm wasn’t that good, but it had its moment. This one has nothing boredom and nausea. Sadly, it seems to have been an important film to Gilliam, based on a book ... Read more »