March 28, 2009: Police Academy Why, when I tell people I recently watched Police Academy, do I feel like I need to explain myself? The first Police Academy movie, released in 1984, was a decent comedy, with a suitably ridiculous plot device and a bunch of colourful characters who strayed charmingly into the territory of […]
March 21, 2009: Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story Here we are solidly back into Judd Apatow territory here, with him on board as a producer (not directing – I’m looking forward to Funny People when it gets released this summer, his first directing effort since Knocked Up). Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story stars […]
March 21, 2009: Flash of Genius I had heard of this film when it had an incredibly brief theatrical run last fall, and was very interested since it’s about cars and engineers, and I’m an engineer with an interest in cars. It’s the true story of an inventor in the early 1970s (Bob Kearns, played […]
March 19, 2009: Role Models Role Models may seem at first blush like a Judd Apatow comedy, but as it turns out, it is not of that pedigree despite the presence of some of his regular cast (including Paul Rudd and Jane Lynch and Christopher Mintz-Plasse), and the overall immature tone but with redeeming values […]
March 13, 2009: W. Here we come back around to Oliver Stone again. I’m still stuck at 1999 in my review of all of Stone’s films, and I’ve been stuck there for 2 years now. What can I say, I’ve been busy. W. is Stone’s look at the life and career of U.S. President George […]
March 4, 2009: Hell Ride I like to swing as far as possible to the opposite side of the “movie quality” spectrum immediately following the Oscars, and see a bunch of junk to cleanse my palate and get ready for the year. Hell Ride seemed like the perfect choice to kick off this period (Mary […]
February 27, 2009: Mary Poppins Ah, Mary Poppins (1964). The one-two punch of this and The Sound of Music the following year brought Julie Andrews to well-deserved stardom like a rocket, and gave children and adults alike two timeless classic films about singing nannies. But Mary Poppins was the one who could fly. I had […]
February 19, 2009: Defiance Defiance was the last movie I was scheduled to see before the Oscar ceremony in late February. There were a couple of documentary and foreign-language films I had not been able to see anywhere, but that usually happens. Defiance was nominated for Best Original Score. Defiance is based on the true […]
February 16, 2009: Trouble the Water Trouble the Water was nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar for 2008. It is primarily about the aftermath of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. It did not win the Oscar, which was pretty much guaranteed to go to the significantly superior Man on Wire. Trouble the Water centres on a […]
February 15, 2009: The Class (Entre les Murs) I try to see “teacher movies” with my wife, who is a schoolteacher, and indeed I was able to convince her to see this one, with its Rottentomatoes.com rating in the mid-90s, Oscar nomination for Best Foreign-language Film (the entry from France), and the fact that it […]