(1960) dir. John Sturges
viewed: 03/25/03 at Castro Theater, SF, CA
Well, I can scratch another cinema classic off of my list of films that I have never seen. And for The Magnificent Seven, I was able to scratch it off in style, seeing it on the big screen in a beautiful 70mm print, in its [...]
Archive of entries posted on March 2003
The Magnificent Seven
The Ring
(2002) dir. Gore Verbinski
viewed: 03/15/03
I had seen the Japanese original of this film, Ringu (1998), a couple of years ago on video, not knowing a whole lot about it. The new American version, The Ring, takes the original story pretty much to the letter. An eerie video (film) turns up that exacts the [...]
Spider
(2002) dir. David Cronenberg
viewed: 03/17/03 at Lumiere Theatre, SF, CA
David Cronenberg’s new film Spider reminded me a good deal of another film that I had seen a couple of years back, Neil Jordan’s The Butcher Boy (1997), so much so, that I began to wonder if they were both adapted from the same author. [...]
Talk to Her
(2002) dir. Pedro Almodóvar
viewed: 02/28/03 at Embarcadero Center Cinema, SF, CA
I thought that this film was excellent. I have been totally stymied on trying to write about it. There is a lot of interesting stuff in it, particularly the way that care and devotion easily transposes into creepy obsession. The relationship of [...]
Chicago
(2002) dir. Rob Marshall
viewed: 03/05/03 at Loews Theatre at the Metreon, SF, CA
More fun than innovative or aesthetically pleasing, Chicago still struck me as reasonably high on entertainment, if not a particularly notable piece of “art.”
But what is “art” anyways, right? In this case, as in so many, it’s a mostly matter of opinion.
I [...]
Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams
(2002) dir. Robert Rodriguez
viewed: 03/09/03
Robert Rodriguez’s campy, over-the-top, comical sensibilities seem to have found their perfect output in the Spy Kids franchise. Rodriguez has always imbued his films with a certain verve and light-heartedness, while playing with the conventions of genre, such as action/adventure or horror. Actually, I don’t know if one could characterize any [...]
Russian Ark
(2002) dir. Aleksandr Sokurov
viewed: 03/03/03 at Opera Plaza Cinemas, SF, CA
Russian Ark follows a surreal trip through time and the Hermitage museum in St. Petersberg, Russia, a dream-like meditation on Russia that documents the splendor of The Winter Palace. Narrated from a first-person perspective (the camera vantage tours the museum via steadicam), the tour [...]
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
(2002) dir. Joel Zwick
viewed: 03/02/03
The story of this film’s success is probably far more interesting than the film itself, which is largely a pretty bland and tepid comedy, sweet-natured, but pretty weak. My mother and many other family members of her generation all loved it and had seen it months ago, just as its [...]
