| Movie | Rating | Review | Date | Your Rating | Match | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - PG | August 22, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| District 9 - R | August 22, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Julie & Julia - PG-13 | August 22, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Star Trek - PG-13 |
"Star Trek XI: How to Mess with the Head of a Half-Breed Vulcan". This franchise reboot stays true to the characters we've all come to know and love while turning the entire history of Trek canon on its head. It's the polar opposite of the first Star Trek film, eschewing cerebral philosophical themes for lots of punching. The Temporal Prime Directive be damned--just hit somebody! Is it the best Trek ever? Maybe, but when you've got such potent revenge tales in Wrath of Khan and First Contact, Eric Bana's Romulan Nero falls short. Even with genocide under his belt, he just doesn't match the treachery of the ubermensch Khan or the zombie-like Borg; his villainy seems like mere pettiness when you consider his motivation. |
May 17, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Sunshine Cleaning - R | May 13, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| While You Were Sleeping - PG | Stock romantic comedy. Bullock's lonely single sob story lays on a little thick at the beginning, and once Peter's family comes into the picture, the whole thing turns transparently predictable. Still, it's well-made, if unremarkable. | May 12, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Soloist - PG-13 | May 4, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway - Unrated | Forget the disappointing film adaptation: THIS is how you should experience Rent on screen. It's gorgeously shot, with an intimate and dynamic theatricality to the camera movements; the only blemish is a lack of wide angles. The cast is as vibrant as any that toured or played on Broadway. | May 3, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Muppets Take Manhattan - G | The most plot-starved of the original Muppet films, but not without its memorable moments. Without this movie, there would be no Muppet Babies. As always, it's chock full of great cameos, including Gregory Hines, Liza Minelli, Joan Rivers, and Dabney Coleman. | April 5, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Synecdoche, New York - R | March 17, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Twilight - PG-13 | March 17, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Animatrix - Unrated | Each of the nine vignettes is beautifully animated and fleshes out the Matrix world. Some stories are weaker than others; Chung's "Matriculated" is probably the biggest disappointment, next to the much-hyped "Final Flight of the Osiris". Maeda's "Second Renaissance" is a gem, evoking several images of 20th century violence and offering poignant socio-political commentary. | March 16, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Sita Sings the Blues - Unrated | That Nina Paley single-handedly produced, directed, and animated this feature over five years on a home computer is a remarkable feat in and of itself. Her real accomplishment, though, is providing a fresh, funny, and accessible version of the Hindu epic Ramayana (or "Sitayana" as the case may be) through a Western feminist lens. Her use of Annette Hanshaw songs as the voice of Sita is brilliantly apropos. | March 10, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Roxanne - PG | Witty modern adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac, minus the tragic ending. Steve Martin is excellent as C.D. Bales, the perfect guy except for his schnoz. Rick Rossovich (Slider from Top Gun) pleasantly surprises with portrayal of the clueless and girl-anxious jock. | March 10, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Rachel Getting Married - R | March 7, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - PG-13 |
Thematically, it's the Empire Strikes Back of the Harry Potter series. Visually, it's second only to Azkaban, and there's a lot of creative use of sound (and/or silence). Stanton's Umbridge reminds me of a Catholic middle school nun. Radcliffe continues to mature as an actor, and inhabits the confused, angry adolescent Potter perfectly. The series has unfortunately reached a point where there are too many characters to juggle, and almost everyone who's not Harry is reduced to a minor role (or even a cameo). Still, though it seems like it compresses a lot of information, it doesn't feel rushed or badly paced like Goblet did. |
March 7, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Horton Hears a Who! - G | Blue Sky's best effort to date. It's loyal to the spirit of the original Dr. Seuss classic, peppering it with numerous clever pop culture references (anime and REO Speedwagon, anyone?). Like all Blue Sky films, the gags sell it. | March 1, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Slumdog Millionaire - R |
Engaging, fresh, and gut-wrenchingly honest. Believe the hype: every Oscar it ran away with, it deserved (although I was pulling for Peter Gabriel for Original Song). And although the Academy didn't choose to recognize them, the child actors' performances are some of the finest to hit the screen in any country. It's a wake-up call for those of us living in the developed world, even with our cratering financial institutions and adjustable rate mortgages. Boyle pulls no punches in hyper-realistically depicting the wretched poverty and filth of the Mumbai slums. |
March 1, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Stop Loss - R | February 23, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Forgetting Sarah Marshall - R | February 23, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Donnie Darko - R | February 23, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Kung Fu Panda - PG |
Decent, but like all Dreamworks animated features, flawed. The plot is your typical unlikely hero who eventually transforms into The Chosen One (here, "Dragon Warrior"), borrowing liberally from Dumbo. (Seriously. There's even a "magic feather" of sorts.) The lovely art direction takes its cues from period kung fu pieces. Unfortunately, the directors and animators failed to do some other basic homework while studying classic kung fu movies; there are a few legibility problems where you're sure something cool is happening, but the action is obscured. Regarding The Furious Five: Why do they bother at all to cast A-list voices in bit parts? As nice as it is to see names like Liu, Rogen, Chan, and Jolie attached to an animation project, it only sets you up for disappointment when each of them squeaks out a few lines and a "HYAH!" |
February 23, 2009 | N/A | |||
| They Live - R | Surprising social satire through a campy B-movie alien zombie lens (or sunglasses, as the case may be). Roddy Piper is here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and he's all out of bubblegum. | February 19, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Return of the King - R |
After Bakshi's failure with his adaptation of the first half of The Lord of the Rings, Rankin and Bass attempted to finish the story in the same style as The Hobbit. The first ten minutes is enough to tell you they shouldn't have bothered; that terrible "Frodo of the Nine Fingers" ballad just never seems to go away. While the strong character design, animation, and voice acting carry over from their previous effort, so do their awful pacing and execrable music. Bilbo keeps falling asleep throughout the thing, and you can't really blame him. |
February 15, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Definitely, Maybe - PG-13 | Refreshing and engaging. It's a rarity to have a smart, unpredictable romantic comedy that doesn't lay on the sugar too heavily. The character arcs perhaps resolve the way you expect them to, but there are plenty of twists to keep you guessing. As a retrospective on the Clinton era, it tracks the devolution from idealism to disappointment perfectly; and yet, the politics serve only as a backdrop to the narrative, never sacrificing the story for pushing an agenda. Abagail Breslin is delightful as the precocious and inquisitive (or inquisitorial) daughter. | February 14, 2009 | N/A |
359 ratings
256 reviews
