(2002) dir. John Stockwell
viewed: 01/26/03
Kind of interesting watching this tepid Hollywood surf movie after watching the vibrant, autobiographical documentary of a genuine surf culture. This is perhaps especially so since Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001) director Stacy Peralta suggested that his inspiration for his documentary process was that some Hollywood studio was considering filming a [...]
Archive of entries posted on January 2003
Blue Crush
Blade II
(2002) dir. Guillermo del Toro
viewed: 01/29/03
The first Blade (1998) film, directed by Stephen Norrington, was a fun B-horror/action film, which featured some amusing CGI death sequences for the vampires dispatched by Blade (Wesley Snipes), the half-human, half-vampire vampire hunter. Since Blade II was directed by Guillermo del Toro, whose 2001 film The Devil’s Backbone [...]
The Fast and the Furious
(2001) dir. Rob Cohen
viewed: 01/27/03
This film almost already seems anachronistic. If that’s possible.
Stylized with slick, flashy editing and a soundtrack with a pumping beat, The Fast and the Furious was a surprise hit at the box office when it came out two summers ago. The film is about street racing, another youth culture movement that [...]
Dogtown and Z-Boys
(2001) dir. Stacy Peralta
viewed: 01/24/03
Dogtown and Z-Boys is a surprisingly cool documentary about the rise of modern skateboarding in and around Venice, CA during the 1970’s. Directed by Stacy Peralta, one of the subjects of Dogtown, the film offers intimate detail and suggests a strong social context for the birth of this suburban underground scene [...]
Catch Me If You Can
(2002) dir. Steven Spielberg
viewed: 01/18/03 at Park Cinemas, Paso Robles, CA
Spielberg’s biopic of Frank Abagnale, Jr.’s life as a con artist extrordinaire is poppy, entertaining Hollywood fare, quite enjoyable to be honest.
The film reminded me somewhat of Ted Demme’s Blow (2001), another biographical film set in a similar period, also following an idealized hero whose [...]
The Clash: Westway to the World
(2000) dir. Don Letts
viewed: 01/17/03
This DVD was loaned to me by a friend at work shortly after Joe Strummer’s death. I had never heard of the film and had a hard time much information on it. I don’t know if the film ever had a proper theatrical run, though I see that it played at [...]
Derrida
(2002) dir. Kirby Dick, Amy Ziering Kofman
viewed: 01/13/03 at Opera Plaza Cinemas, SF, CA
Having spent a semester of my life in a seminar on Jacques Derrida in graduate school in Cinema Studies, I felt some sense of obligation beyond my general interest to get out to see this documentary film about one of the most [...]
The Good Girl
(2002) dir. Miguel Arteta
viewed: 01/19/03
The Good Girl is a moderately weak comic drama featuring actress Jennifer Anniston as something supposedly “other” than “Jennifer Anniston,” something more of a “character.” So, in this film Anniston plays Justine, who, from her vague drawl and working class universe, is meant to represent something quite different from the [...]
Lovely and Amazing
(2001) dir. Nicole Holofcener
viewed: 01/11/03
Has film studies finally designated the “chick flick” as a genre? I mean, outside of the melodrama or other genres that have been classified as “women’s films” (I attempt to ask this question without inflecting them as much as possible) can it be classified as genre? Not that I [...]
Jesus’ Son
(1999) dir. Alison Maclean
viewed: 01/08/03
I suppose with a title like Jesus’ Son, I shouldn’t have been overly surprised by a certain Christian subtext that this film contained, a subtext that wasn’t buried too deeply below the surface, at that. It didn’t strike me as overly pedantic or anything, but it actually has made me [...]
