| Movie | Rating | Review | Date | Your Rating | Match | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A Nightmare on Elm Street - R | December 11, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Clerks - R | December 11, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| A Single Man - R | Want to see it | December 11, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Microcosmos: Le peuple de l'herbe (Microcosmos) - Unrated | December 10, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Planet Terror (Grindhouse Presents: Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror) - R | December 10, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Two For the Money - R | December 10, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Kill Bill: Volume 1 - R |
Quentin Tarantino fans have been waiting six long years for the release of the director's follow-up to Jackie Brown. So what do they get for their patience? An incomplete movie, artlessly cleft in the middle. Cinema interruptus. A film whose editing and inelegant structure have been severely compromised by the avarice of the Miramax head honchos, who believe they can wring more money from viewers by splitting Kill Bill into two pieces and double-charging everyone.
There's a key difference between Kill Bill and the likes of The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings, and Jean de Florette/Manon des Sources. All of those movies required more than one part to tell the entire story, but they were developed in such a way that each movie represents a chapter, sculpted within its constraints to follow a basic three-act structure. Each has a clearly defined, complete arc within the context of a larger, sprawling narrative. The average viewer left The Matrix Reloaded, The Fellowship of the Ring, and Jean de Florette satisfied (to varying degrees) and anticipating the next film. Not so with Kill Bill, which was constructed as a single motion picture before being sundered at the eleventh hour. The result is messy and frustrating - a movie that feels incomplete in every aspect. I felt like a con had been perpetrated upon me. As a whole, Kill Bill might be an entertaining product, but, after seeing Volume 1, I was insulted. What Miramax has done (in collusion with Tarantino, who seemingly supports their position) is a travesty. It's outrageous to expect people to buy two tickets, make two trips to theaters, and wait four months in between in order to see an entire movie. Kill Bill is a basic revenge tale that Tarantino has dressed up by using gravity-defying martial arts and comically copious amounts of blood. The main character doesn't have a name (just as she doesn't have much of a personality - she's an icon), and is referred to solely as "The Bride" or by her code name, "Black Mamba." As played by Uma Thurman, she is grimness personified. That's understandable, though. On her wedding day, her husband-to-be was murdered, she was beaten up and shot in the head, and her unborn child was stolen from her womb. (We don't yet know why - presumably we'll find out in Volume 2.) The five responsible for this were Bill (David Carradine) and the four members of his "Deadly Viper Assassination Squad:" O-Ren Ishi a.k.a. Cottonmouth (Lucy Liu), Vernita Green a.k.a. Copperhead (Vivica A. Fox), Budd a.k.a. Side Winder (Michael Madsen), and Elle Driver a.k.a. California Mountain Snake (Daryl Hannah). Four years later, after awakening from a coma, The Bride has one thing on her mind: revenge. She starts out by going after Cottonmouth and Copperhead. (Side Winder, California Mountain Snake, and Bill are left for Volume 2.) One aspect of Kill Bill that doesn't disappoint are the action sequences. Although no better than those in The Matrix Reloaded, they are fun to watch, as The Bride slices and dices her way through dozens of enemies, using hidden wires to do Crouching Tiger-like moves. Tarantino has designed Kill Bill as an homage to the Hong Kong movies he dearly loves, and it accomplishes that. There is so much blood that it's virtually impossible not to laugh as gallons of it spew like a fountain from a decapitated head. The level of gore is so over-the-top that only the most sensitive of viewers will be grossed-out. Tarantino is going for campy comedy in these cases rather than realism. One could argue that the best thing about Pulp Fiction was the delicious dialogue, and that's something almost completely absent here. The number of quotable lines and memorable non-action sequences is small. Stylistically, the film is clearly Tarantino's - it's a colorful, high-energy production filled with little cultural in-jokes (including a reference to an "old Klingon proverb"). One entire flashback sequence is presented in anime, some scenes are in black-and-white, and there are plenty of "cool" moments (such as Lucy Liu and her posse approaching the camera in slow motion). The music is nearly all from the '70s, featuring both pop songs and film score snippets. Kill Bill is many things, but for the most part, it's not boring. I say "for the most part" because Tarantino could have used the services of a less generous editor. Volume 1 could have been a lot tighter. There's a lot of padding to be found here, and it's probably the result of trying to stretch a single three-hour movie into two 105-minute features. I realize that Tarantino is in love with every minute of film he shot, but even the best directors have to give up some footage. Tarantino's unwillingness to do this gave Miramax ammunition to bisect the movie. Had every moment of Kill Bill been riveting, this might have been understandable, but we're left with half-a-movie that runs for too long. As has become Tarantino's trademark, events (which are presented in a series of chapters) do not unfold chronologically. Movies are typically shot out of sequence; this one is shown out of sequence. While I can understand the placement of the flashback background, there are other instances when the non-linear progression has no purpose other than to be contrary to the norm. Why show revenge #2 before revenge #1? There doesn't seem to be a reason. Maybe it will all become clear in Volume 2, although I somehow doubt it. As far as the performances go, there's not much to comment upon. Uma Thurman does a credible job as the Termanatrix-like killing machine. We admire her tenacity but never identify with the character. (This is a problem with a revenge flick, where we're supposed to root for the hero and despise the enemy. Neither is the case here, especially since we never see Bill.) Lucy Liu is one of Charlie's Angels converted to the Dark Side. Vivica A. Fox has almost no screen time. Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, and David Carradine are being held back for Volume 2. One could make a good argument that legendary Japanese star Sonny Chiba does the best acting job with his supporting role as a sword-maker. Throughout Kill Bill, I got the sense that Tarantino thinks he is being more clever than he actually is. This is easily the worst of Tarantino's four features (the other three being Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown). At this point, it's difficult to tell whether the story as a whole is worth telling - that judgment will have to await the release of Volume 2. But, based on what's available for the time being, I can only recommend Kill Bill for die-hard Tarantino buffs and Hong Kong action junkies. Everyone else would do better to stay away and avoid the bitter disappointment of seeing how the greed of a distributor can degrade the movie-going experience. |
December 10, 2009 | N/A | |||
| A Walk to Remember - PG |
Romance, tears, and not a well-developed character in sight - what more could one expect from the director of The Wedding Planner? Once again, director Adam Shankman has foisted upon the public a production so narrowly targeted that a majority of movie-goers will ignore its existence. In the case of A Walk to Remember, the only people likely to have nice things to say about what's on the screen are girls in their pre-teen and early teenage years, and the word "discrimination" is rarely used to describe their movie-going habits.
With this feature, viewers get two narrative arcs for the price of one. What starts out as a formulaic high school love story of opposites attracting abruptly changes into a maudlin tear-jerker. Of course, in order to cram two staple stories into a single 100-minute motion picture, corners have to be cut. So characters are poorly developed, subplots are wrapped up in fast and unconvincing ways, and the entire production feels rushed. One could make an argument that teenage girls have a longer attention span than their male counterparts (after all, they sat through three-plus hours of Titanic repeatedly), but the filmmakers responsible for A Walk to Remember weren't taking any chances. There's no fat to be found on the movie's bare-bones skeleton. Unfortunately, there's no meat, either. A Walk to Remember begins in typical good girl-meets-bad boy fashion. The former is Jamie Sullivan (Mandy Moore), a cute high school senior who sings in the church choir and looks like she's about 14. We know she's a geek because she's into astronomy. (Nit-pick alert: almost every detail concerning telescopes and the night sky is inaccurate.) The latter is Landon Carter (Shane West), who's in the top echelon of the school's in-crowd. We know he's cool because he drives a hot car. One day, Landon gets busted for an infraction that involves alcohol and trespassing, and his punishment is to participate in the school play. He has trouble learning his lines, and, rather than embarrass himself in front of the entire school, he decides to make an effort. So he goes to Jamie, the female lead, for help. Landon grovels a little, and she comes to his aid, although he still doesn't want to be seen with her in public. However, their secret friendship develops into something more, and soon Landon is defending Jamie from the barbed attacks of his "friends". They admit their love for one another, then Jamie drops the bombshell: she's terminally ill. Cue the sad music and the switch in tone from cute to painfully manipulative. It's possible to make a good motion picture using a formulaic storyline, provided that the characters inhabiting that movie are well-developed and likable. Unfortunately, in A Walk to Remember, we are presented with types who are ineffectively and inadequately fleshed out. Instead of real human beings, we have stereotypes. Perhaps in Nicholas Sparks' novel, Landon and Jamie come alive, but an author can do a lot more in several hundred pages of text than a filmmaker can do in 100 minutes. And the limited dramatic range of the leads doesn't help, either. Shane West (the male star of the forgettable Whatever It Takes) looks and acts like just about every good-looking male performer of his age. Mandy Moore, better known for singing than acting, shows a certain charisma but is not consistently convincing. She's better than Mariah Carey and the 'Nsync boys, but that's not saying much. (Of course, she gets to sing a couple of songs.) A weary Peter Coyote plays Jamie's preacher father, and a haggard Daryl Hannah (has she ever looked so old?) is Landon's mom. I might have been willing to call the film inconsequential-but-passable if it wasn't for the final half hour, in which the director tries relentlessly to milk tears from the audience. I was strongly reminded - and not favorably - of the Leelee Sobieski romantic melodrama Here on Earth, with the notable difference that Sobieski can act circles around Moore. Nevertheless, as is only the case in movies, Moore manages to look more beautiful as the disease progresses. (One minor point in Shankman's favor: he spares us the death scene.) Like Message in a Bottle, the other Sparks book made into a movie, A Walk to Remember aims for the tearducts. Unlike the earlier film, it scores a clean miss. I won't claim that A Walk to Remember is unendurable, just uninspired, although it can boast one of the most inventive product placements in recent memory. I can't imagine the film having much success at the box office. Moore will attract some attention, but not enough to make a big splash. Recent movies starring singers haven't fared well (witness the reception of Glitter and On the Line), and there's no reason to believe this one will do any better. The target audience may enjoy the film, but there's little hope than anyone other than 11-15-year old girls will be willing to endure Shankman's curdled concoction. There's nothing remotely memorable about this walk. |
December 10, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Titanic - PG-13 |
Short of climbing aboard a time capsule and peeling back eight and one-half decades, James Cameron's magnificent Titanic is the closest any of us will get to walking the decks of the doomed ocean liner. Meticulous in detail, yet vast in scope and intent, Titanic is the kind of epic motion picture event that has become a rarity. You don't just watch Titanic, you experience it -- from the launch to the sinking, then on a journey two and one-half miles below the surface, into the cold, watery grave where Cameron has shot never-before seen documentary footage specifically for this movie.
In each of his previous outings, Cameron has pushed the special effects envelope. In Aliens, he cloned H.R. Giger's creation dozens of times, fashioning an army of nightmarish monsters. In The Abyss, he took us deep under the sea to greet a band of benevolent space travelers. In T2, he introduced the morphing terminator (perfecting an effects process that was pioneered in The Abyss). And in True Lies, he used digital technology to choreograph an in-air battle. Now, in Titanic, Cameron's flawless re-creation of the legendary ship has blurred the line between reality and illusion to such a degree that we can't be sure what's real and what isn't. To make this movie, it's as if Cameron built an all-new Titanic, let it sail, then sunk it. Of course, special effects alone don't make for a successful film, and Titanic would have been nothing more than an expensive piece of eye candy without a gripping story featuring interesting characters. In his previous outings, Cameron has always placed people above the technological marvels that surround them. Unlike film makers such as Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, Cameron has used visual effects to serve his plot, not the other way around. That hasn't changed with Titanic. The picture's spectacle is the ship's sinking, but its core is the affair between a pair of mismatched, star-crossed lovers. Titanic is a romance, an adventure, and a thriller all rolled into one. It contains moments of exuberance, humor, pathos, and tragedy. In their own way, the characters are all larger-than- life, but they're human enough (with all of the attendant frailties) to capture our sympathy. Perhaps the most amazing thing about Titanic is that, even though Cameron carefully recreates the death of the ship in all of its terrible grandeur, the event never eclipses the protagonists. To the end, we never cease caring about Rose (Kate Winslet) and Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio). Titanic sank during the early morning hours of April 15, 1912 in the North Atlantic, killing 1500 of the 2200 on board. The movie does not begin in 1912, however -- instead, it opens in modern times, with a salvage expedition intent on recovering some of the ship's long-buried treasure. The expedition is led by Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton), a fortune hunter who is searching for the mythical "Heart of the Ocean", a majestic 56 karat diamond which reputedly went down with the ship. After seeing a TV report about the salvage mission, a 101-year old woman (Gloria Stuart) contacts Brock with information regarding the jewel. She identifies herself as Rose DeWitt Bukater, a survivor of the tragedy. Brock has her flown out to his ship. Once there, she tells him her version of the story of Titanic's ill-fated voyage. The bulk of the film -- well over 80% of its running time -- is spent in flashbacks. We pick up the story on the day that Titanic leaves Southampton, with jubilant crowds cheering as it glides away from land. On board are the movie's three main characters: Rose, a young American debutante trapped in a loveless engagement because her mother is facing financial ruin; Cal Hockley (Billy Zane), her rich-but-cold-hearted fianc?; and Jack Dawson, a penniless artist who won his third-class ticket in a poker game. When Jack first sees Rose, it's from afar, but circumstances offer him the opportunity to become much closer to her. As the voyage continues, Jack and Rose grow more intimate, and she tries to summon up the courage to defy her mother (Frances Fisher) and break off her engagement. But, even with the aid of an outspoken rich women named Molly Brown (Kathy Bates), the barrier of class looms as a seemingly-insurmountable obstacle. Then, when circumstances in the Rose/Cal/Jack triangle are coming to a head, Titanic strikes an iceberg and the "unsinkable" ship (that term is a testament to man's hubris) begins to go down. By keeping the focus firmly on Rose and Jack, Cameron avoids one frequent failing of epic disaster movies: too many characters in too many stories. When a film tries to chronicle the lives and struggles of a dozen or more individuals, it reduces them all to cardboard cut-outs. In Titanic, Rose and Jack are at the fore from beginning to end, and the supporting characters are just that -- supporting. The two protagonists (as well as Cal) are accorded enough screen time for Cameron to develop multifaceted personalities. As important as the characters are, however, it's impossible to deny the power of the visual effects. Especially during the final hour, as Titanic undergoes its death throes, the film functions not only as a rousing adventure with harrowing escapes, but as a testimony to the power of computers to simulate reality in the modern motion picture. The scenes of Titanic going under are some of the most awe-inspiring in any recent film. This is the kind of movie that it's necessary to see more than once just to appreciate the level of detail. One of the most unique aspects of Titanic is its use of genuine documentary images to set the stage for the flashback story. Not satisfied with the reels of currently-existing footage of the sunken ship, Cameron took a crew to the site of the wreck to do his own filming. As a result, some of the underwater shots in the framing sequences are of the actual liner lying on the ocean floor. Their importance and impact should not be underestimated, since they further heighten the production's sense of verisimilitude. For the leading romantic roles of Jack and Rose, Cameron has chosen two of today's finest young actors. Leonardo DiCaprio (Romeo + Juliet), who has rarely done better work, has shed his cocky image. Instead, he's likable and energetic in this part -- two characteristics vital to establishing Jack as a hero. Meanwhile, Kate Winslet, whose impressive resume includes Sense and Sensibility, Hamlet, and Jude, dons a flawless American accent along with her 1912 garb, and essays an appealing, vulnerable Rose. Billy Zane comes across as the perfect villain -- callous, arrogant, yet displaying true affection for his prized fianc?. The supporting cast, which includes Kathy Bates, Bill Paxton, Frances Fisher, Bernard Hill (as Titanic's captain), and David Warner (as Cal's no-nonsense manservant), is flawless. While Titanic is easily the most subdued and dramatic of Cameron's films, fans of more frantic pictures like Aliens and The Abyss will not be disappointed. Titanic has all of the thrills and intensity that movie-goers have come to expect from the director. A dazzling mix of style and substance, of the sublime and the spectacular, Titanic represents Cameron's most accomplished work to date. It's important not to let the running time hold you back -- these three-plus hour pass very quickly. Although this telling of the Titanic story is far from the first, it is the most memorable, and is deserving of Oscar nominations not only in the technical categories, but in the more substantive ones of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Actress. |
December 10, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Insomnia - R | December 10, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| I Still Know What You Did Last Summer - R | December 9, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Conversation - PG | December 9, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Julie & Julia - PG-13 | December 9, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| American Pie Presents: Book of Love - R | December 9, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Ed Wood - R | December 9, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Moon - R | December 9, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Any Given Sunday - R | December 9, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Idiocracy - R | December 8, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Insider - R | December 8, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Dog Day Afternoon - R | December 8, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Batman - PG-13 | December 8, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Over the Hedge - PG | December 7, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Invictus - PG-13 | Want to see it | December 7, 2009 | N/A | |||
| True Romance - R | December 7, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Skeptic - Unrated | December 7, 2009 | N/A |
17119 ratings
1708 reviews
