Category: Movies

I saw Beowulf in IMAX 3D at the Metreon this afternoon. Anybody who has interest in this movie but hasn’t seen it yet for whatever reason, I’d say that 3D, whether it’s the IMAX version or not, is really the way to go. It delivers pretty well on the spectacle, and that kind of thing…

No Country for Old Men is about as close to perfect as you’re ever going to see in a movie. Not a single shot is unnecessary. The pacing is perfect; both for the movie overall, and for individual scenes that feel as if they were meticulously orchestrated down to a fraction of a second. Almost…

They’ve been warning us for years that the onslaught of digital distribution, torrents, iTunes, rental-by-mail services, and the new entertainment-in-pill-form (not available in some markets) was going to change everything. What they failed to warn us about were all the tragic implications of the entertainment glut. Case in point: there are currently movies by Wes…

Astute readers will notice I haven’t been updating this weblog, and that’s because of a desperate attempt to get caught up with work. (That’s what happens when every time you get stuck writing, you run to the safety of The Orange Box and watching Japanese movies from the 80s about schoolgirl detectives). But it’s still…

On his Invincible Super-Blog, Chris Sims wrote a fine review of the 1987 Japanese movie Sukeban Deka that was enough to make me put it at the top of my Netflix queue, and for that I’m thankful. Still, it’s hobbled by the old “aren’t those Japanese people wacky?” mentality that doesn’t really capture the sheer…

Or, Shallow and Not Particularly Novel Insights Gleaned from Watching Return to the Blue Lagoon on Satellite Just Now: It’s got Milla Jovovich in it! For some reason, I’d always thought The Fifth Element was her first movie. Even in her jailbait days, Milla Jovovich was shockingly beautiful. The “Brian Krause” in the movie is…

I don’t know what got up the butts of the Rotten Tomatoes people, because I liked Resident Evil: Extinction an awful lot. It’s exactly what I was hoping to get out of a Resident Evil movie. There are a lot of reviews which dismissively compare it to a videogame, to which the obvious responses are:…

I don’t think I need to remind anybody about the significance of this weekend, but just in case: it’s the opening weekend of Resident Evil: Extinction. I haven’t been reading or watching anything about the movie except for the trailer, because I don’t want no haters dragging me down. If I’d listened to the kind…

I remember when the intro clips they showed at movie theaters used to be cool. You’d be flying through space and there’s a Coke formation up ahead but all of a sudden popcorn starts exploding all around you and then they thank you for not smoking. Nowadays, the theater conglomerate that currently monopolizes Marin is…

There’s a scene in the the trailer for the upcoming re-remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where Nicole Kidman’s character is walking through a crowd of people and is warned not to show any emotion, because that’s how they can tell you’re still human. Looking at the Rotten Tomatoes page for Stardust is a…

I’m one more movie closer to death, since I saw The Night of the Hunter last night. And it’s at least a dozen kinds of awesome. A movie like this is really difficult for me to describe. Something like His Girl Friday is easy: it’s timeless, just as cool today as it was 67 years…

I was really impressed with The Bourne Identity. I didn’t see it until the second movie had already been out on DVD for a while, so I’d already heard the consensus, that it was better than you’d expect from an action movie starring Matt Damon and directed by the guy who did Swingers. But even…