(2005) dir. Rob Zombie
viewed: 05/28/06
I’d been curious about Rob Zombie’s gore films even though they had gotten mixed reviews because some of the comments about them suggested a sense that they strove to attain some visceral quality of 1970’s horror films, something more edgy than other current horror fare. I didn’t realize that The [...]
Archive of entries posted on May 2006
The Devil’s Rejects
Thumbsucker
(2005) dir. Mike Mills
viewed: 05/27/06
Tepid indie fare. A coming of age story about a teenager who sucks his thumb. There are some good performances by Tilda Swinton and Vince Vaughn and others. And a typically strange and representational performance by Keanu Reeves as an orthodontist. There are moments of true quality [...]
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
(2003) dir. Judy Irving
viewed: 05/25/06
This film played in San Francisco for some time and intrigued me. I have always found the flock of wild parrots in the city as one of the city’s amusing characteristics. I’ve seen them flying many times and heard their distinctive jabbering. I didn’t really know how one could make a [...]
The Body Snatcher
(1945) dir. Robert Wise
viewed: 05/24/06
This film appears as a companion on the DVD for I Walked with a Zombie (1943), part of the Val Lewton collection. Directed by Robert Wise, director of The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and The Sound of Music (1965) among many others, it is like other Lewton films, [...]
Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones
(2002) dir. George Lucas
viewed: 05/22/05
Ah,…Star Wars.
As a general rule, I won’t watch anything in an “edited-for-television” mode. But with Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005) just released and my impending trip to the theater to see it, I was thinking that it would be good to revisit the 2nd …or is [...]
Brick
(2005) dir. Rian Johnson
viewed: 05/23/06 at the Embarcadero Theater, SF, CA
It’s been a long time since there was a movie that I was hearing a lot of word of mouth buzz that I hadn’t read much about beforehand. But lots of people have been talking about Brick and most have been recommending it. [...]
I Walked with a Zombie
(1943) dir. Jacques Tourneur
viewed: 05/21/06
I had seen I Walked with a Zombie when I was living in England 11 years ago and the film had made a great impression on me. I have long been a fan of producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur’s collaborations and really think that this film is pretty [...]
Over the Hedge
(2006) dir. Tim Johnson, Karey Kirkpatrick
viewed: 05/20/06 at the Loews Metreon Theatres, SF, CA
Not groundbreaking by a long shot, but a mostly well-made feature animation, Over the Hedge, the latest digital animation to hit the big screens, is alright. Adapted from a comic strip that used to run in the San Francisco Chronicle some years [...]
Aeon Flux
(2005) dir. Karyn Kusama
viewed: 05/20/06
The first 15 minutes of this film promised something along the lines of perhaps the greatest, most embarrassingly bad science fiction in a decade. The hilarious costuming, pretentious anti-government, dystopian narrative so derivative it makes one wince, it’s all just totally hysterical. Just the way that Charlize Theron stands, [...]
Wolf Creek
(2005) dir. Greg McLean
viewed: 05/19/06
Of all the edgy horror/splatter flicks that have been buzzing around like High Tension (2003) and Hostel (2005), Wolf Creek is probably the best (best still doesn’t necessarily signify “great”, mind you). It’s nothing incredibly original. I mean, it’s “young people meet a serial killer in an isolated spot and gore and [...]
