(2001) dir. Barry Levinson
viewed: 08/24/02
I don’t have a lot to offer on this film.
I tend to think of Barry Levinson as one of the potentially interesting directors working in Hollywood over the past 20+ years, though it has to be said that, when looking at the body of his work, there is a lot more [...]
Archive of entries posted on August 2002
Bandits
Monsoon Wedding
(2001) dir. Mira Nair
viewed: 08/29/02 at Balboa Theater, SF, CA
I’d been sort of intending to see this film for some time, but circumstance led me to think it would eventually be showing up in the DVD section of the film diary rather than here in “theatrical”. But circumstance took another little turn, a most-conveniently-timed [...]
Gosford Park
(2001) dir. Robert Altman
viewed: 08/11/02
Gosford Park is a witty, entertaining film, both as a lightly comedic take on the English drawing room mystery and as a loose study of social class in 1920’s England.
Altman, an auteur with associated with more genuinely “American” subjects, is clearly an outsider to the world that he portrays in this [...]
Storytelling
(2001) dir. Todd Solondz
viewed: 08/22/02
Self-conscious, self-reflexive, and possibly self-loathing, Todd Solondz’s Storytelling is a cynical look at the creative process.
The film is broken into two parts, “Fiction” & “Non-fiction,” though Solondz certainly attempts to blur the lines between definitive notions or each. In the first section, set in a creative writing workshop, Solondz suggests [...]
Frankenhooker
(1990) dir. Frank Henenlotter
viewed: 08/17/02
Though I had a friend who really who was really into this movie around the time of its original release, I somehow never managed to catch it. I guess that is what these little mini-marathons are all about.
Frankenhooker is a pretty entertaining piece of campy perversity, from Frank Henenlotter, the [...]
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
(1986) dir. Tobe Hooper
viewed: 08/17/02
Thirteen years after the original, Tobe Hooper did what most people should never do: messed with a classic. Even if it was his classic.
I recall seeing this film on video, probably not long after its initial release. I remembered that it wasn’t very good. Apparantly, I remembered [...]
Halloween
(1978) dir. John Carpenter
viewed: 08/17/02
For those of you familiar with the film diary, you will realize that I have seen more John Carpenter films this year than from any other director. It’s part coincidence and part intentional look at a pretty interesting horror auteur.
This film was my pick for my nephew Jordan and my [...]
Birthday Girl
(2001) dir. Jez Butterworth
viewed: 08/15/02
Nicole Kidman as a Russian mail-order bride. With a pretty bad Russian accent.
That was enough to interest me in this film enough to see it.
It turns out that this film is English,…which I didn’t know. It also turns out that Ben Chaplain, the male lead in this film, is [...]
Resident Evil
(2002) dir. Paul W.S. Anderson
viewed: 08/14/02
Unsurprisingly, this movie wasn’t very good.
Based on a video game that I have never played, I certainly didn’t bring any preconceptions to this film…other than that I would have been impressed if it had an interesting narrative.
It didn’t.
The film is more like a scenario, with a lot of action thrown [...]
The Devil’s Backbone
(2001) dir. Guillermo del Toro
viewed: 08/03/02
The Devil’s Backbone is an elegant nightmare of a children’s story set against the historical backdrop of the Spanish-American war. Beautifully produced and consistantly interesting, it is a very good film.
Set in an orphanage in the middle of the desert, the narrative tends toward the gothic, with ghosts, a [...]
