(2002) dir. Chris Columbus
viewed: 11/27/02 at Park Cinemas, Paso Robles, CA
The Harry Potter phenomenon. Like many such phenomena, 99% of it is media-made hype. That is hardly breaking news, but it’s still worth pointing out when approaching a film like this.
In a slightly less cynical time, not all that long ago, I still [...]
Archive of entries posted on November 2002
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Eight Legged Freaks
(2002) dir. Ellory Elkayem
viewed: 11/06/02
Semi-fun homage to the giant insect/arachnid subgenre of horror films. What it lacks in invention it makes up for (as much as it can) in its embrace of silliness and action. The film moves along at a fair clip, telling the story deftly and succinctly (of course in a [...]
Nine Queens
(2000) dir. Fabián Bielinsky
viewed: 11/02/02
Slick, clever film about two con artists who meet up and make a pact to work together for exactly 24 hours. Scheming and shysting ensue. Probably the first Agentine film that I have ever seen. I have not been able to come up with a lot to say about this film [...]
The Shipping News
(2001) dir. Lasse Hallström
viewed: 11/02/02
Lasse Hallström is a competent mainstream Hollywood director, and The Shipping News is a decent, yet uninspired literary adaptation melodrama. Miramax, who produced this film, must have decided that Hallström is a specialist in the literary adaptation, since this is only the latest of several such productions that he has helmed [...]
Evil Dead Trap
(1988) dir. Toshiharu Ikeda
viewed: 10/31/02
I had such a little burst of seeing films that I wound up with a bit of a glut of diary entries to create. Somehow, I missed out that I hadn’t written on this film. I had selected this film as my Halloween horror film treat. I had [...]
CQ
(2001) dir. Roman Coppola
viewed: 10/29/02
Roman Coppola’s CQ is a highly self-reflexive meditation on the film-making process. This film seems to have a very personal side to it, suggesting that its reflexivity is perhaps all the more literal. Roman is the son of Francis Ford Coppola, the second of the famed director’s children to [...]
Vampires: Los Muertos
(2002) dir. Tommy Lee Wallace
viewed: 11/01/02
Don’t ask.
No really…
Okay, I rented this almost solely because it has one of my big guilty pleasure actresses in it, Natasha Gregson Wagner (who here is billed simply as Natasha Wagner), daughter of Natalie Wood. Wagner bears a distinct resemblence to her late mother, though maybe less classically beautiful. She [...]
