First, the bad news. HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE, the fourth installment of the Potter tales, is the weakest film in the series so far. The good news is that it’s still a highly entertaining 2 1/2 hours, and one that effortlessly sweeps the audience into that enchanted world of Hogwarts School of… Read More »
KING KONG
The first thing that comes to mind after seeing Peter Jackson’s KING KONG is wow. Make that WOW. He’s done the seemingly impossible: followed up his magnificent LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy with a film that cements his reputation as a director that can deliver big films that aren’t afraid to wear their hearts on… Read More »
UNDERWORLD EVOLUTION
I blame the CSI-ing of the culture. Why else would UNDERWORLD EVOLUTION have a scene in which vampire corpses, sheathed in body bags, are taken to a ship docked at a suitably foggy pier, and autopsied? Scalpels, draining tables, the whole deal, not to mention animations of things going on in the bodies of the undead. Pondering that,… Read More »
NANNY MCPHEE
There is something deeply satisfying about a fable with a time-honored story line that may offer no surprises as to plot points as it barrels along to its conclusion, but that does, nonetheless, pay strict attention to the serious moral lesson to be learned from it while also strictly adhering to a loopy, almost anarchic… Read More »
PI
PI, the film and the number, addresses the deep human longing for order and pattern in the universe. Yes, it posits, there is a pattern, a grand scheme hidden to all but the chosen few, and the result of discovering it is fraught with peril. The story concerns Max, a driven, asocial mathematician who spends his days… Read More »
NOWHERE
Once, as Gertrude Stein was reminiscing about her hometown of Oakland, CA, she said, and I quote, “There’s no there, there.” It’s unfortunate that she was never asked about LA, or if she was, that her response was not recorded for posterity. I shudder to think what she would have made of a place that… Read More »
NIGHT WATCH (NOCHNOY DOZOR)
Check out the contests and giveaways section for a chance to win a poster from NIGHT WATCH!The Russian import, NIGHT WATCH, has the right touch of otherworldliness. In the stylish visuals and the snazzy effects there is the sense of reality reconfigured into a place where good and evil aren’t so much philosophical premises as… Read More »
DOOGAL
When a film is released without a press screening, as was the case with DOOGAL, one expects to find in it a certain level of ineptitude. Here, though, is something that transcends merely being bad, merely inspiring a torrent of vitriol before consigning it to the more insulated portions of one’s memory. This has done… Read More »
X-MEN: THE LAST STAND
Oh how the mighty have fallen. X-MEN: THE LAST STAND is the third installment in what until now has been a sterling franchise and its failings are an affront to what has come before. To be sure, the fine philosophical underpinnings, one of the series’ hallmarks, are still there, but with a new director, Brett… Read More »
THE LAKE HOUSE
It’s not that THE LAKE HOUSE, based on the Korean film SIWORE, is an insipid bit of romantic fluff, it’s just that it drags by much like the two-year gulf between our chronologically crossed would-be lovers. And when a film is 108 minutes long, that’s not a good thing. Never mind that its own internal logic starts to… Read More »
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