April 30, 2009: Three Monkeys This was a very yellow movie. Obviously deliberately desaturated, it’s one of the things that sticks with me as I revisit it in my mind, although I don’t know how relevant that is. Three Monkeys is the story of a Turkish family, a husband and wife and their adult son, […]
April 28, 2009: Coraline Coraline is the animated tale of a girl, struggling to get some attention from her stay-at-home yet busy professional parents, who finds the excitement and love she’s looking for in an alternate world populated by life-size dolls with buttons for eyes. Or does she? And at what price? I saw this […]
April 26, 2009: State of Play State of Play is what you might call a crackling little story about journalists and politicians, and what happens when people’s secrets come out. It’s an entirely serviceable film, if nothing remarkable, which makes me want to see the six-hour British miniseries from which it was adapted. I can’t […]
Waiting… (2005) was a, ahem, spunky little comedy that spoke some rarely-voiced truths about the grind of the restaurant business, and it developed a decent cult following thanks to its unbridled crude humour and batty characters, including a smarmy ladies’ man played by Ryan Reynolds (mentioned in my earlier review of Adventureland). It was uneven, […]
April 13, 2009: I Love You, Man Wow, I really need to catch up on my reviews, because it feels like forever since I saw this movie. But it feels like that in a good way, in that I’m thinking that it’s almost time to revisit it again. I Love You, Man has a level […]
April 13, 2009: Duplicity I hadn’t necessarily planned to see Duplicity, and the previews weren’t setting it apart from standard genre fare, but I happened to be going to the movies with friends one night, and this came up as a selection. I can take or leave Julia Roberts these days, but I’ll happily see […]
April 7, 2009: Adventureland Why do people lie to each other for dramatic purposes in movies? This is how I wanted to open my review, but I don’t think it’s entirely fair to Adventureland to lump it in with the cookie-cutter teen angst movies which rely on this device in order to generate early-third-act conflict […]
April 7, 2009: Sunshine Cleaning I was excited about Sunshine Cleaning going in, and it’s my kind of movie, which is a good way to start a viewing experience. All too often it’s the other way around. Amy Adams is more than just a flavour of the month, with two Oscar nominations under her belt […]
March 29, 2009: Vanishing Point (1997) I’ve been a Vanishing Point (1971) fan for nearly 20 years now. I watched this 1997 TV remake of the film on the same night as the original. I had not seen this before. As a Half-Assed movie reviewer of 80+ movies now, this is the first time I […]
March 29, 2009: Vanishing Point (1971) This is one of exactly two movies my mother claims doesn’t exist. It’s a long story, but I think she’s not keen on car movies. Vanishing Point (1971) is an introspective story, very much a product of its time, about a man driving long distances through the US west, […]