Fantastic Bad Old Ninja (Weekly Links)

Movies I reviewed for the Herald this week.
Fantastic Mr. Fox. “Very much a Wes Anderson movie.”
Red Cliff. “Savoring the military strategies involved.”
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. “To quote a different Cage performance, rockin’ good news.”
Ninja Assassin. “Nobody said being a ninja assassin would be easy.”
Old Dogs. “A food fight with a gorilla [...]

Movie Diary 11/24/2009

Young Victoria (Jean-Marc Vallee, 2009). Hard to make all the machinations of the British royal family history undramatic, but this movie gives it a shot. Emily Blunt, able as always, stars. (full review 12/25)
Up in the Air (Jason Reitman, 2009). There’s a point in the third act of this movie where you think the Screenwriting [...]

Movie Diary 11/23/2009

Ain’t Love Cuckoo? (Jules White, 1946). Columbia two-reeler by the Three Stooges production unit. Stars are Richard Lane and Orson Welles regular Gus Schilling, but this movie is taken over for a couple of scenes by a vaudeville and radio comedienne named Terry Howard. (I guess she’s from vaudeville and radio; there’s almost no info [...]

Blind Side of the New Moon (Weekly Links)

Reviews I wrote for the Herald this week:
The Twilight Saga: New Moon. “Bella sure can pick ‘em.”
Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire. “As a filmmaker, Daniels comes on like a hard-hitting linebacker.”
Blind Side. “Manages to keep the schmaltz level down.”
Planet 51. The males of this planet wear no pants.”
William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe. “A [...]

Movie Diary 11/19/2009

The Twilight Saga: New Moon (Chris Weitz, 2009). Everybody’s shirtless, almost, in the sequel to the pretty good Twilight. Kristen Stewart is excellent, the CGI dogs are not, the Northwest locations are convincing, the final line is daft. (full review 11/20)
Me and Orson Welles (Richard Linklater, 2009). Nice idea about a kid (Zac Efron) signing [...]

Movie Diary 11/17/2009

Everybody’s Fine (Kirk Jones, 2009). De Niro in a remake of a Giuseppe Tornatore film. This was one of those digitally-projected screenings where the image is so crisp (every blade of grass in De Niro’s lawn standing out in relief) it leads to questions about what the experience is like in theaters projecting it in [...]

Movie Diary 11/16/2009

Red Cliff (John Woo, 2008). Big-scale spectacle and pretty good use of Woo’s talents. Military strategy always sounds like an unexciting subject for a film, but when it’s coherent, well…. (full review 11/25)
Planet 51 (Jorge Blanco, 2009). Spanish animated offering with Shrek-ian 1950s green people wondering why a stray American astronaut has invaded their world. [...]

Untitled Broncos Live in 2012 (Weekly Links)

Reviews I wrote for the Herald this week. Plus more links below.
2012. “An all-stops-out, Saturday afternoon, popcorn-munching hoot.”
Gentlemen Broncos. “A funny little slip of a movie.”
Araya. “Less a restoration than a revelation.”
Liverpool. “See into the movie through your own lens.”
Pirate Radio. “Cutesy, baby-talk.”
(Untitled). “It’s both amused and intrigued by its subject.”
We Live in Public. “A [...]

Movie Diary 11/12/2009

Gentlemen Broncos (Jared Hess, 2009). This one got scathing reviews completely misreading Hess’s characteristic sympathy (the Coens draw the same “they hate their characters” treatment). Weirdly scatalogical and perhaps pitched too exactly at the level of its teenage protagonist’s imagination, this is quite a funny movie, if not as splendid as Hess’s Napoleon Dynamite. (full [...]

Movie Diary 11/10/2009

2012 (Roland Emmerich, 2009). Can’t review the movie before it opens, of course; that would be illegal. But I can say that my weakness for the cinema of Roland Emmerich will not be cured here. (Main problem with 10,000 BC, in retrospect: no big buildings to demolish.) Liking this gasser of a movie wasn’t easy at [...]