Finding Nemo is the high water mark for Pixar as far as box office is concerned. Among recent animated films (post-The Lion King), only Shrek 2 has sold more tickets. And it certainly deserved all the acclaim it received, it’s an almost perfect film.
Really, a film about fish starring Albert Brooks. Just […]
Viewed December 19, 2006
Pokémon Heroes is the 2003 entry in the annual Pokémon film series (and the last to be released theatrically in the US). Like the TV series, it follows the adventures of Pokémon trainers Ash Ketchum, Misty and Brock as they learn about the world of Pokémon. This time, they come […]
Viewed November 17, 2006
Kim Possible: A Sitch in Time is the first of two made-for-TV movies that spin off from the Disney Channel Original Series Kim Possible. For those of you not in the know, Kim Possible is about a teenager, Kim (voiced by Christy Carlson Romano), who acts as a sort-of secret agent […]
Viewed October 13, 2006
Freddy vs. Jason is exactly what you think it is: no more, no less. It’s a virtual non-stop parade of death and mayhem, with only a light sprinkling of thought and character.
Now, this is a film that was developed by focus group, if ever there was one. There’s clearly no […]
Viewed October 11, 2006
Vampire Effect is, in many ways, a typical Hong Kong actioner with little originality or truly interesting aspects to make it stand out from a sea of lookalike films.
The story tells of a vampire hunter named Reeve (Ekin Cheng) who has not had much luck with assistants (they keep getting killed). […]
Viewed September 21, 2006
There are three reasons I bought Brother Bear. First, I’ve been buying a lot of Disney films lately and this one popped up during by searching. Second, it features songs by Phil Collins. Even if I didn’t like the film, there’s a good chance I’d like the songs. […]
Viewed September 11, 2006
Classic Albums: Pink Floyd - The Making of ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ does a fine job of digging into Pink Floyd’s creative process, while displaying how connected to their work the members of the band have remained over the years.
There is plenty of the classic music of Dark Side of […]
Viewed August 11, 2006
Back in 1992, when Quentin Tarantino was the poster boy for “new cinema” with his groundbreaking film Resevoir Dogs, I was more impressed by Robert Rodriguez’ film El Mariachi. There’s no question that Resevoir Dogs is more professional (especially the acting talent) and slicker. But El Mariachi showed that Rodriguez […]
Viewed August 9, 2006
Shattered Glass tells the true story of Stephen Glass, an up-and-coming young journalist at The New Republic who was found in 1998 to have fabricated facts, quotes and even people in many (if not most) of his articles.
Glass is played by Hayden Christensen (best known as Anakin Skywalker in Episodes II & […]
Viewed July 7, 2006
Okay, so here’s the idea: a big-budget film based on a theme park ride. Sounds crazy? that’s because it is. Until the success of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, I daresay no one thought this notion could possibly work. Yet it does, and […]
Viewed June 28, 2006
I don’t know what I was expecting from SkyHigh, but I’m certain it’s not what I got. The box notes seemed to indicate an intense look at the possibilities of vengeance and the nature of the afterlife. What SkyHigh ends up being about is just another attempt to storm the […]
Viewed June 25, 2006
My Name Is Modesty is the second attempt to bring Modesty Blaise to the big screen following 1996’s Modesty Blaise. The earlier film takes a very stylist look at the character, sending up the spy films of the day and really going towards a “camp” feel (must to the annoyance of […]
Viewed June 19, 2006
Okay, I pretty much watched Blackball (or “National Lampoon’s Blackball”, as the DVD states) because Vince Vaughn was in it. While I wasn’t that impressed with the last vaughn film that I saw, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004), he’s usually rock solid. I fully expected this to be little […]
Viewed June 18, 2006
Bruce Almighty is an extremely well-balanced comedy starring Jim Carrey and Jennifer Aniston. It concerns Bruce (Carrey), a TV reporter who feels life has treated him unfairly. After a particularly disastrous day, he has a meeting with God (Morgan Freeman), who endows him with all the powers of the Almighty, […]
Viewed June 7, 2006
I’m not going to kid you. Making Nemo is not a full-fledged documentary on the scale of Empire of Dreams or RKO Production 601. But it is a fairly in-depth look at the production of Finding Nemo (2003), with lots of behind-the-scenes footage and insight into the creative process behind […]
Viewed June 4, 2006
Boundin’ is a lightweight cartoon as Pixar shorts go. Created by veteran animator Bud Luckey, it tells the story of a sheep who is very proud of his wool, only to have it shorn off to his humiliation. A fortuitous encounter with a legendary jackalope helps him come to terms […]
Viewed May 24, 2006
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is everything I expected it to be: a decent enough action flick with little in the way of originality. Basically, T3 tells a very similar story to T2: two robots sent to the past; one to kill, one to protect. Throughout the course of […]
Viewed May 14, 2006
I only decided to watch Timeline because I had recently finished listening to the book on tape and was interested in how they would adapt it. Unfortunately, they did everything one expects from Hollywood, and that’s not a good thing.
The story revolves around a group of archaeologists who get sucked into […]
Viewed April 26, 2006
You know, I thought it would be fun to watch some Bollywood movies for this project. But even after buying a bunch of them at a very nice sale at Eros Enterainment, I had only watched Bollywood Calling, which happened to star a guy with whom I (briefly) went to high […]
Viewed April 24, 2006
I am a big fan of Rowan Atkinson and the promise of a film with him in a kind of “Maxwell Smart” role seemed like a great idea. Unfortunately, Johnny English just doesn’t come up to the standard set by Get Smart! or Atkinson’s best work, like the Blackadder series.
The premise […]
Viewed April 5, 2006
Not to be confused with the 1989 Martin Scorcese / Francis Ford Coppola / Woody Allen anthology film of the same name, New York Stories is a short film from Donna Karan clothing company. It is basically a collection of loosely connected storylines apparently designed to show off DKNY clothing.
As these […]
Viewed March 28, 2006
Anything Else is something of a return to form for Woody Allen. A hallmark of his more recent work has been a certain looseness in his style. Both his camera work and scripts have been much less precise than they were in the past. Anything Else may not stand […]
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 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 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 February 1, 2006
Okay, so it’s not fair to expect much from a “skinemax”-type superhero movie, whose main focus is (quite naturally) the sex. The problem is, I’ve seen good films in the genre, even from the people who made SpiderBabe.
A little over a year ago, my brother told me I should see this […]
Viewed January 10, 2006
Bowing to pressure from various sources to “watch some good movies” for a change, I decided to watch Sofia Coppola’s Academy Award-winning Lost In Translation starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson as Americans abroad in Japan who connect with each other despite differences in age and circumstances.
Well, I can’t see what all […]