(2003) dir. Glen Morgan
viewed: 10/25/03
As I stuck this DVD into my machine at home and settled back on the couch to watch this, I began to wonder exactly why I had even put this film on my list of films to watch. As a youth, I’d seen the 1971 original from which this film [...]
Archive of entries posted on October 2003
Willard
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle
(2003) dir. McG
viewed: 10/26/03
Subtlety, thy name is not “McG”.
When I saw the “original” Charlie’s Angels (2000) in the theaters, I found it pretty fun despite its absolute crapness. I think the attitude that they were shooting for was something along the lines of, “It’s stupid, but it’s fun. If you want to critique [...]
All the Real Girls
(2003) dir. David Gordon Green
viewed: 10/20/03
Was this movie bad or was it just me? I had read a number of glowing things about this film, and I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe something along the lines of Terrence Malick or something (though I know that is shooting pretty high).
Not 20 minutes into [...]
Lost in Translation
(2003) dir. Sofia Coppola
viewed: 10/06/03 at Loews Theatre at the Metreon, SF, CA
Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, I thought, was excellent. Having seen her previous film, The Virgin Suicides (1999), I wasn’t necessarily thinking that I would like this film so well. The Virgin Suicides seemed like it was reaching to capture a [...]
The Italian Job
(2003) dir. F. Gary Gray
viewed: 10/18/03
Many years ago, I was writing magazine and music reviews for a notable punk rock fanzine. Being a junior member of the staff, I was given a lot of cheap, unexciting music to review and was giving it my genuine personal criticism. The editor/publishers thought that I was [...]
Kill Bill: Vol. 1
(2003) dir. Quentin Tarantino
viewed: 10/13/03 at Loews Theatre at the Metreon, SF, CA
In the San Francisco Chronicle (a terrible source for critical reviews but is the newspaper that I read regularly), critic Mick LaSalle totally lambasted Quentin Tarantino and Kill Bill: Vol. 1 for the violence of the film. My understanding is that this [...]
Bend It Like Beckham
(2002) dir. Gurinder Chadha
viewed: 10/11/03
Question: What kind of a humorless sourpuss wouldn’t enjoy this upbeat, English, “grrrl power” film about a young Sikh girl’s dream of playing professional football (soccer, for you Americans who don’t know better)?
Answer: Me.
While it’s positive, upbeat, and cheerful, the film is also amazingly naff. At many points it is [...]
Identity
(2003) dir. James Mangold
viewed: 09/21/03
This movie was surprisingly bad. The film is intended to be a clever psychological thriller with a unusual plot “twist.” And to some extent that aspect of it is okay. In reality, it plays out more like a cheap “slasher” film or something, with characters killed off one [...]
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
(2002) dir. George Clooney
viewed: 10/03/03
This movie was also surprisingly bad. Well, bad might be a little rough. I had higher hopes for it, that’s for sure.
When I saw that Clooney was directing it, though, my hopes weren’t quite so strong. It may be that, as an actor, Clooney chooses some of Hollywood’s [...]
Das Experiment
(2001) dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel
viewed: 09/14/03
This is yet another in a string of films that I caught recently that had at their base a really clever concept but only yielded rather middling returns.
Very loosely based on a real incident, the film tells the story of a psychological experiment gone wrong in which a number of men [...]
