| Movie | Rating | Review | Date | Your Rating | Match | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Mission - PG |
Ambitious (maybe even too much so) criticism of imperialism and its destruction of indigenous culture. De Niro and Irons are excellent foils struggling for the same cause; hot and cold, retaliation and nonviolence, both tragically failing against the colonial behemoth. Morricone's score is magical--it's almost impossible to listen to "Gabriel's Oboe" without choking up. Go Jesuits. |
December 27, 2008 | N/A | |||
| The Spirit - PG-13 | December 27, 2008 | N/A | ||||
| The Little Mermaid - G | Ushered in the magic of the Disney Renaissance, and brought the animated movie musical form to a level not seen since The Jungle Book. Howard Ashman, you left us too soon. | December 15, 2008 | N/A | |||
| The Scarlet Letter - R | Nathaniel Hawthorne is not rolling over in his grave. No, his zombified corpse has emerged from the ground, pickaxe in hand, and he seeks retribution for this abomination. | December 14, 2008 | N/A | |||
| The Hours - PG-13 | Brilliant enough to deserve a single screening, but too depressing to subject oneself to multiple viewings. The A-list cast delivers excellent performances all across the board. The feminist themes are well-developed in the three overlapping story threads. Maybe I'm being oversensitive, but I couldn't help but read a subtle undertone of misandry in it; the male characters are weak, controlling, clueless, or a combination of all three. | December 14, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Finding Forrester - PG-13 | Feel-good film that resorts to cliches and suffers from lapses of predictability, but still literate, intelligent, and well directed. The cast is solid, but Connery infamously missteps trying to demonstrate street cred (forever immortalized at YTMND.com). F. Murray Abraham plays--surprise!--the stuffy, pompous villain. | December 14, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Amadeus - R |
Glorious. Forget the historical inaccuracies; no, Mozart never dictated the Confutatis from his Requiem to Salieri. But that scene (and the whole movie, by extension) so clearly encapsulates the genius of Mozart, even classical music haters can appreciate him. Hulce and Abraham give the performances of their lifetimes. |
December 13, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Star Trek - Insurrection - PG | Probably the most bearable odd-numbered Trek movie. It plays like a typically strong STNG episode, only longer--but on the big screen, that's just not good enough. F. Murray Abraham, typecast in the villain role since Amadeus, hams it up so much he starts BLEEDING. | December 11, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Frost/Nixon - R | December 11, 2008 | N/A | ||||
| Gone With the Wind - G | Beautifully, beautifully shot. But the whole thing plays like a melodramatic soap opera, and it drags on far too long. Frankly, Rhett doesn't give a damn, and neither do I. | December 9, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Napoleon Dynamite - PG | How this ever became a hit will remain one of the great mysteries of all cinematic history. In a sincere attempt to say something nice about it, though: it uses silence well, it pleasantly surprises by never descending into gutter humor (a staple of too many MTV Films), and the entire thing is maddeningly quotable. But this movie demarcates the divide between Gen X and Gen Y; I just don't get it. | December 9, 2008 | N/A | |||
| The Rocky Horror Picture Show - R | The Rocky Horror experience--the toast, toilet paper, callback lines, and shadow cast--gets four stars. The actual movie itself is an incoherent low-budget amateurish mess. The entire reason the cult ritual emerged is BECAUSE the movie is so awful; making fun of it is essential to enjoying it. | December 9, 2008 | N/A | |||
| The Day After Tomorrow - PG-13 | Makes "science" into as big a joke as the "plot", hurting the environmental cause it tries to advocate. Lots of suspense and great action, but completely implausible. | December 9, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Gladiator - R |
Ambitious but flawed. The quick-cut shaky camera look hurts the legibility of the action scenes, and Scott milks the drama a little too heavily. Perhaps surprisingly, the climax and ending eschew a Hollywood resolution for something more in line with Greek tragedy (a good thing). Crowe's Maximus is everything Gerard Butler's Leonidas should have been. Joaquin Phoenix is the perfect villain. |
December 9, 2008 | N/A | |||
| 50 First Dates - PG-13 | Sandler and Barrymore reunite and try to reproduce their success with The Wedding Singer. There's undeniable chemistry between them, and the 24-hour amnesiac gimmick actually has legs. While it misses a few marks, it's still a sweet romantic comedy that puts a clever spin on some old cliches. | December 9, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Wedding Crashers - R |
So predictable and removed from reality, it hurts to watch. Owen Wilson's aw-shucks schtick gets very old very quickly. I have to say that watching the censored version on TBS added a lot more comedy than anything actually written in the script, and the commercials offered a break from its torturous inanity. |
December 7, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Simon Birch - PG |
For every genuinely funny or sincere moment, there's a manipulative contrived one. It forces its tearjerking situations upon the audience, and loses any emotional authenticity by the time the third or fourth one in succession hits. Decent cast, though. Too bad they're all two-dimensional characters. |
December 6, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Hitch - PG-13 | Mostly mediocre and predictable romantic comedy, but with some real flashes of brilliance--Kevin James is perfect as Smith's schlemiel client, and his "first kiss" scene will turn you into a grinning idiot. | December 6, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Finding Nemo - G | One of Pixar's best. The first five minutes are potentially trauma inducing. | December 6, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Good Night, And Good Luck - PG | December 6, 2008 | N/A | ||||
| The Transformers - The Movie - PG |
It takes balls--real live Unicron-sized Energon balls--to kill off your beloved flagship hero (along with other prominent favorites) within the first 15 minutes. The quality of the animation and story still surprises, even when you come to the realization that it's basically a 94-minute toy commercial. Orson Welles plays his final role--going from Charles Foster Kane to an oversized robotic planet eater. It's just too depressing and tragic to ponder the metaphor there. |
November 27, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Babe: Pig in the City - G |
Take Babe, drop him in The City, then proceed to suck out everything else that made the first movie so brilliant--James Cromwell, a coherent plot, charming characters, its wink-and-a-nod wittiness--and you're stuck with this sloppy and exponentially inferior sequel. The art direction is nice, at least. |
November 26, 2008 | N/A | |||
| The X-Files - Fight the Future - PG-13 | Strong enough not to alienate those unfamiliar with the series. Still, it fails to up the ante for the big screen (ala Firefly/Serenity or almost any even-numbered Trek movie) and ends up feeling like just another episode, except two hours long. | November 26, 2008 | N/A | |||
| Quantum of Solace - PG-13 | November 24, 2008 | N/A | ||||
| Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa - PG | November 24, 2008 | N/A |
359 ratings
256 reviews
