February 3, 2007 – 9:04 am
Pan’s Labyrinth
Filmed in Spanish, with English subtitles. Billed as a fairytale for adults, this is close to the mark. It’s hard not to be caught up in the story, and swept along with what’s happening. Del Torro has written and directed an amazing work. Yes, it’s violent - mainly the violence of the ruthless Captain, [...]
January 27, 2007 – 9:55 pm
Movie: The Pursuit of Happyness
Another Will Smith Oscar vehicle. This time, he eschews the majority of the wisecracks for the role of an incredibly hard-working single parent. A good story, but with the poor lighting, it was hard at times to tell how good Smith’s acting was. Thandie Newton was great as Smith’s wife. If [...]
Movie: Flushed Away
Kid-friendly humour, in an Aardman animation kind of way. Laugh-out-loud funny in places; a constant run of visual references to other film and culture. Good vocal performances, in a pantomime sense. It even has a mime!
December 28, 2006 – 10:03 pm
Movie: Babel
The Tower of Babel is the bible story where God confuses the language of the people on earth. The uniting element of this film is seeing people from a range of different languages and cultures fail to communicate with each other.
A somewhat depressing, but clever film that interweaves a series of plots and characters [...]
December 26, 2006 – 5:26 pm
Movie: Happy Feet
A movie that kids who are tolerant to occasional scares will enjoy (there were a few tears in the screening I caught). Environmental message meets big musical and dance numbers, with a few Robin Williams lines thrown in for good measure. Watchable, though probably not my favourite movie this year.
December 12, 2006 – 8:12 am
Movie: A Scanner Darkly
Somewhere in this concept is a good movie itching to get out. Sadly, in its execution, it misses the mark; the painted-over visuals just make everything harder to see: there’s a loss of cinematic depth that is quite frustrating. While some of the dialogue is quite funny, in general it is missing [...]
December 2, 2006 – 9:43 am
The Prestige
I’d heard nothing but good things about this movie, and it lives up to its reputation: the story of an obsession between two magicians, told in Christopher Nolan' trademark non-linear way.
The use of diaries, and flashback; the interplay between the characters, how fast the two-hour-long film seems to go… it’s well worth a viewing. [...]
November 26, 2006 – 8:35 pm
Movie: Catch a Fire
Tim Robbins is the drawcard for this bio-pic of a South African freedom fighter. The main problem I saw with it was that it didn’t make apartheid seem like such a bad thing: more of a rallying point for the African people than a system of oppresion.
Sure, at the start of [...]
November 1, 2006 – 9:13 pm
Little Miss Sunshine
A road trip movie that shows the path that a dysfunctional family takes to have a more positive outlook on life. A well-conducted emotional journey with laughs, sad moments, and - despite the perhaps larger than life traits of the characters - something for everyone to relate to.
The chocolate ice cream scene [...]
October 22, 2006 – 9:08 am
Movie: Crank
Despite a trailer with the promise of a solid action film - one with a simple, but workable premise - this movie turns out to be far more like a video game poorly brought to the big screen. Plot is lacking, dialogue is overly heavy with the kind of swearing that suggests the writers [...]
October 14, 2006 – 2:15 pm
Movie: The Departed
A Martin Scorsese film, in my experience, is usually full of drugs and violence, and this is no exception. Indeed the violence has been toned down somewhat, so it’s not as graphic: you’re more likely to see the result of the event than the impact itself. An unusually high amount of bad language [...]
October 2, 2006 – 5:10 pm
Movie: The Devil Wears Prada
Popcorn movie. No laugh-out-loud moments, but consistently entertaining.
September 14, 2006 – 10:50 pm
Movie: Thank You for Smoking
My hopes to see this on its opening night or sooner were dashed when popcorn taxi had to move its screening to a night when I had college, so I’m seeing this much later than I was hoping to.
It’s a movie that is very clever, presents some of the emotional [...]
August 28, 2006 – 10:36 pm
Snakes on a Plane. Another guilty pleasure of a movie. Captures some of the spirit of the old action movies, with its attitude to sex and violence… quite a few jump moments, and some content that’s not suitable for kids. The plot? I’m not sure what they’re going to do with the sequel - it [...]
Movie: Confetti
British humour; mostly played for laughs, but there are some moments of emotion. Caution: the naturalists’ wedding is fairly confronting stuff.
Yes, it’s a comedy, but if you watch this film, you’ll probably find yourself barracking for the success of each relationship, regardless of the moral framework that you have. If you’ve ever gone through [...]
16 Blocks
Bruce Willis, Mos Def, and David Morse are characters in this better-than-average action/drama film. Are we in store for a Hollywood ending? What secrets do these characters hide? Can Bruce Willis make it through a movie without his character being injured somehow?
Movie: Superman Returns
Evokes a lot of memories from the first two Superman movies; as someone has said, while you see other superheroes fight with their enemies, all you really see Superman do is lift things.
There’s plenty of lifting, but there’s even a little bit of genuine fighting. Kevin Spacey is a great Lex Luthor, bringing [...]
Movie: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
Spoiled by Greater Union’s reserved seating, Andrew M and I arrived at the Hoyts Broadway to queue up only minutes before the film was scheduled to start, and so we were at the back of the longest queue I’ve ever seen there. This put us in the very [...]
Movie: Colour Me KubrickBen and I took in this film at the Palace Verona. Malkovitch is the main player here, as a con-man unhappy with his own life who pretends to be (film director) Stanley Kubrick, despite not really knowing much about the work of the man, nor looking anything like him. The real-life Alan [...]
X-Men: The Last Stand
As fast moving as a comic book (and with plenty of large-scale action scenes to justify a big-screen viewing), this film jumps between violent and dramatic, with the occasional touch of humour or sadness. They could have taken it to much greater depths in a lot of spots, but overall, it’s an [...]