November 5, 2008: RocknRolla Back in the day, I used to go into London on a Saturday, sometimes with an actual agenda, sometimes just to wander around. I suppose I should consider myself fortunate that I didn’t encounter the London which is portrayed by Guy Ritchie on film. I’m a big fan of Lock, Stock […]
November 2, 2008: Casino Royale (2007) (Note: I’ve recently implemented a new policy here at Half-Assed Movie Reviews, of actually re-reading my writeups just prior to posting. Typos should decrease, but we’ll see whether the quality of the writing improves or degrades.) I once watched the original Casino Royale. I know I should revisit it, […]
October 3, 2008: There’s Something About Mary In the middle of a totally uncharacteristic gap in my movie watching, this is the only movie I actually saw in the space of over a month. My schedule was disrupted by general fall busyness, home maintenance, and a vacation. And this is not to say that I […]
September 17, 2008: Righteous Kill The casual Half-Assed Movie Reviews reader might wonder why I continue to bombard myself with known crappy movies, rather than pursuing potentially more rewarding cinematic avenues, such as my stated goal to have filled in the gaps in my Best Picture viewing back to 1960 prior to the awarding of […]
September 17, 2008: Pineapple Express Here’s another entry in the canon of prolific producer and sometime director Judd Apatow, the new filmmaking ambassador of the slacker nation. This one is directed by David Gordon Green, lending some real directing cred to this variation on the theme – modern-day toked-up slackers getting into some mischief but […]
September 13, 2008: Adam Resurrected I’m a Paul Schrader fan. I love that whole 1970s Hollywood era, when the new generation of film-school auteurs (Scorsese, Coppola, Spielberg, etc) were given free rein for a while, and ultimately became the power players of the Hollywood of today. Paul Schrader made his name writing screenplays for Martin […]
September 13, 2008: Control Alt Delete Control Alt Delete is an independent Canadian movie, which was making its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival. I believe this Saturday morning screening was only the second one ever for the public. Writer-director Cameron Labine cast his brother in the kind of humiliating role that every kid […]
September 12, 2008: L’Instinct de la Mort I’m not sure when I discovered Vincent Cassel. It might have been in Irreversible, which is certainly not the prettiest way to be introduced to anyone, though of course he fared better in that film than others did… He was in a weird little French movie named Sheitan […]
September 11, 2008: Gigantic We’re still at the Toronto International Film Festival. Gigantic was running at a more sane mid-afternoon time, unlike the extreme timings of the past two reviews. This is a low-budget Hollywood effort, with some real names, without any distribution arrangement yet. I expect that it will see a theatrical run eventually, […]
September 10, 2008: Martyrs Midnight Madness runs every night at the Toronto International Film Festival. There’s always at least one gore-fest for the raging crowd of midnight moviegoers. Saw and Hostel both showed up here before they hit the mainstream theatres. Last year, a French movie called A L’Interieur pushed boundaries with a crazy woman […]