Viewed March 25, 2006
Moonshine is a return to top form for the Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle / Buster Keaton team. It breaks free from the conventions that most of their pairings have been hampered by and provides a wonderful experience.
Arbuckle and Keaton play a pair of Revenue Agents out to catch moonshiners in the hills. […]
Viewed March 24, 2006
Honestly, it was Will Ferrell that made me finally watch Superstar. Although I have felt for some time that Molly Shannon is a gifted performer, her Saturday Night Live character Mary Katherine Gallagher has always irritated me (along with most of her SNL characters, and Ferrell’s, and most of SNL post-Phil […]
Viewed March 23, 2006
By now, I should be used to M. Night Shyamalan’s peculiar ability to create a realistic and convincing world for his stories to illuminate, yet I was still surprised by Signs. I was completely taken in by the trailers and advertisements that seemed to indicate that Signs is a mystery, following […]
Viewed March 22, 2006
G.I. Joe - Spytroops: The Movie was a free giveaway with the purchase of certain G.I. Joe 3 1/4″ action figures back in 2003. While I like the G.I. Joe line, I was never that big into it, so I didn’t get this at the time. However, late last year […]
Viewed March 21, 2006
Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii, which documents a no-audience performance by Pink Floyd at a Pompeii auditorium, comes in two distinct flavors: the original 1972 version, that features only performance footage and the 2002 “Director’s Cut”, which features contemporary interviews with the band, as well as visuals augmented by computer generated images […]
Viewed March 20, 2006
Comedian answers the question “What do you do when your sitcom (one of the most successful in history) goes off the air?” For Jerry Seinfeld, the answer was to go back on the road. Seinfeld toured his classic act with the intention of retiring his well tailored jokes at the […]
Viewed March 19, 2006
It’s A Mad Mad Mad World Too (original title Fu gui huang jin wu) is the fourth of the “Mad Mad Mad World” films that chronicle the trials and tribulations of the Biu family as they cope with the problems life brings them.
In ‘Too’, the family finds it difficult to continue in […]
Viewed March 18, 2006
His Majesty, The Scarecrow of Oz is the only of the Oz Film Company’s silent films based on the work of L. Frank Baum that was apparently directed by Baum himself.
The basic plot of the original book, The Scarecrow of Oz, remains intact, but characters have been shifted around to […]
Viewed March 17, 2006
The debate rages on as to whether Disney devalues its films by releasing straight-to-video sequels like The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea (2000) and Cinderella II: Dreams Come True (2002). Often, these films lack the spark that made the original so beloved. There are usually several key cast […]
Viewed March 16, 2006
Hoo boy! I know I found myself somewhat defending Alone In The Dark earlier this year. There was some stuff in there that I thought was pretty good. The same cannot be said about director Uwe Boll’s previous video game adaptation, House of the Dead.
House of the Dead is […]
Viewed March 15, 2006
Joe Kidd stars Clint Eastwood a year after his seminal Dirty Harry, riding high on the cool persona he had cultivated in “Spaghetti Westerns” in the 60s. Although it sees Eastwood playing a part very similar to those he played in films such as The Good, The Bad and the Ugly […]
Viewed March 14, 2006
Hollywood Boulevard has a fascinating history, even for a film executive produced by Roger Corman. Apparently, Jon Davison, one of Corman’s producers at New World Productions, approached Corman and suggested that he could produce a movie for less money than Corman had ever spent. Corman gave him $50,000 and Hollywood […]
Viewed March 13, 2006
With one of the most impressive box office runs of 2005, March of the Penguins established a place in movie history for itself. If it weren’t for the political diatribe Farenheit 9-11, March of the Penguins would be the highest grossing documentary of all time. And a far more worthy […]
Viewed March 12, 2006
Hell Is For Heroes marked Steve McQueen’s first significant starring role as the troubled Pvt. Reese, but the strong supporting cast means he doesn’t have to support the whole film himself.
McQueen doesn’t stretch much here. He never establishes exactly why Reese has taken his strange attitude. He’s just angry all […]
Viewed March 11, 2006
Liberty is one of the last silent shorts that Laurel and Hardy did together (they really didn’t do that many) before moving into talkies. It is different from other Laurel & Hardy shorts because of its use of Harold Lloyd-style “high-flying” stunts. Laurel & Hardy tended towards slapstick, but their […]
Viewed March 10, 2006
Scary Movie 3 (or more accurately, Scary Movie 3.5 - the “Unrated” version that I watched) is, obviously, the third in the popular horror movie parody series that began as a take on the “Scream” films. Less obvious is the complete shift of creative control from creator/stars Shawn & Marlon Wayans […]
Viewed March 9, 2006
Oh my, what can be said about Merlin: The Return? I’m a big fan of Arthurian stories and can usually find something appealing about most of them. (For instance, I’ve been known to gush at some length about that episode of Thundercats where Mumm-Ra acquired Excalibur.) But Merlin: The […]
Viewed March 8, 2006
Carry On Screaming is a visually impressive entry in the “Carry On” series, but I found it’s substance to be quite lacking.
The plot is not unimaginative, with it’s mad doctor turning beautiful maidens into store mannequins. The characters are straight out of the Hammer horror films that were so popular at […]
Viewed March 7, 2006
Hide-Out is a predictable, but immensly entertaining little comedy.
It stars Robert Montgomery as a mob enforcer and womanizer, who finds himself stuck with a New England farm family while recouperating from a gunshot wound. While he is there, he finds himself falling not only for the farmer’s daughter Pauline (Maureen O’Sullivan), […]
Viewed March 6, 2006
In my search for Mann (1999), the Bollywood version of Love Affair, I came upon Eros Entertainment, a company that specializes in films from India. They have a large catalog, good prices, reasonable shipping rates (and a sale going on). I not only got Mann, but also Gumnaam (1965), which […]
Viewed March 5, 2006
Okay, I’m a big fan of the old tv show Mystery Science Theater 3000. I’ve even written an extensive episode guide to it’s first season (on KTMA in Minneapolis). But that doesn’t mean I’ve seen every available episode. Many of the early Comedy Central shows weren’t aired that often, […]
Viewed March 4, 2006
College is pretty much a formula Buster Keaton film of the era. Buster, fresh out of high school (btw, he is 32 at the time this film is made) is in love with one of the most popular girls in his class, played by Anne Cornwall. She spurns him, however, […]
Viewed March 3, 2006
At the time that Chicken Little was made and originally released, it seemed unlikely that Disney and Pixar would be working together ever again and Disney needed to show they could at least compete in the arena of CGI films. Since then, of course, Disney has agreed to buy Pixar, but […]
Viewed March 2, 2006
To many people, The Village is damaged by writer/director M. Night Shyamalan’s penchant for the twist ending. They see it as an Achilles Heel, meaning that if the twist doesn’t pay off, the movie fails. Well, the big twist inThe Village (which I will admit to knowing ahead of […]
Viewed March 1, 2006
Dünyayi kurtaran adam (1982), also known as “The Turkish Star Wars”, earns every bit of its poor reputation, but does manage to land in that “so-bad-its-good” category thanks to the dramatic heights that it aspires to (and fails to reach).
Some of you may have already heard of “The Turkish Star Wars”. […]
Best Supporting Actor
Steve Buscemi as Seymour in Ghost World (2001)
Buscemi is always a strong performer. In Ghost World, he serves as the object of Thora Birch’s obsessions, simultaneously portraying a simplistic characature and a deeply complex individual. (And also manages to be funny a lot of the time.)
Best Supporting Actress
Rita Wilson as Anne Crane […]
Viewed February 28, 2006
I had so completely prepared myself to be disappointed by The Producers that I was shocked by how much I liked it. Whoever was in charge of marketing this film should be fired. I watched it with a modest-sized audience in a discount theater and they never stopped laughing. […]
Viewed February 27, 2006
It’s impossible for me to watch All Creatures Great and Small without thinking of the long-running TV series of the same name. Based on the novels by James Herriot (real name Alf Wight), the series was a staple in my house from its first airings on public television. The characters […]
Viewed February 26, 2006
Don Knotts passed away on February 24th, but the news didn’t get out until the 26th. Having only just recently acquired a set of four of Knotts’ films, I decided that watching The Ghost and Mr. Chicken was a fitting tribute. And it’s a pretty good film if you can […]
Viewed February 25, 2006
The Magic Cloak of Oz is one of a series of “Oz” based films that L. Frank Baum produced around 1914. It is based on Baum’s novel Queen Zixi of Ix, which originally was not connected to Oz (although its characters later appeared in proper Oz books).
It tells the remarkable story […]
Viewed February 24, 2006
Almost Home is a documentary that centers on the Saint John’s On The Lake retirement community in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as it tries to re-invent itself with a new focus on quality of life for its residents. Although it covers many different people in the environment, the main focus is on manager […]
Viewed February 23, 2006
Ghost World is a strange film to categorize. It is considered a comedy and the review blurbs on the DVD attest to the fact that the studio certainly considers it one. But, although there are plenty of funny moments, it is much more dramatic in its overall tone than most […]