Not Quite District 9 (Weekly Links)

Reviews I wrote for the Herald this week.

Miyazaki meets Chagall

District 9. “The snap of originality.”

Ponyo. “A groove of pure enjoyment.”

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard. “Tries to have it both ways.”

Thirst. “It moves like a drugged animal.”

Adam. “The ‘Rain Man’ approach.”

Not Quite Hollywood. “The view is hilarious.”

And: Sunday afternoon at 2 at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, I will introduce the local premiere of The Music of Regret, a 40-minute film by artist Laurie Simmons, featuring Meryl Streep. Info here.

Movie Diary 8/6/2009

Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009). Does anybody else make movies like this? Would anybody else get away with making movies like this? One thing about Tarantino: for a guy who loves movie conventions as much as he does, he sure spends a lot of time short-circuiting those conventions when he gets his hands on something. (full review 8/21)

District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009). Large outer-space shrimp herded into camps in Johannesburg, and a hero who’s more nerd than stud. How can this miss with the core audience? (full review 8/14)

Thirst (Park Chan-wook, 2009). An original take on the vampire movie, as expected. Now if everything in this movie had been like the final ten minutes…. (full review 8/14)