(1969) dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
viewed: 06/27/06 at Balboa Theater, San Francisco, CA
The Balboa Theater has become a great repetory cinema of late and is starting to get the buzz. There have been more and more films playing there that I have wanted to go and see, but hadn’t been able to pull off. It felt great [...]
Archive of entries posted on June 2006
Army of Shadows
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
(2005) dir. Shane Black
viewed: 06/26/06
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is pretty darn funny and enjoyable. Ultimately, I think it’s due more to a good script and good performances by Robert Downey, Jr., Val Kilmer, and Michelle Monaghan. I say this because I think the direction is pretty awful and clutters what could have been [...]
The Constant Gardener
(2005) dir. Fernando Meirelles
viewed: 06/24/06
Based on a novel by spy author John le Carré (whom I have never read), The Constant Gardener is meant to be a political thriller with serious and real relevence for the contemporary political world. Directed by Fernando Meirelles, whose City of God (2002) caught a wave of positive reviews for [...]
The Girl Next Door
(1999) dir. Christine Fugate
viewed: 06/23/06
I’d read about this documentary several years back when it first came out and it took a long time to finally end up on DVD. The film explores a couple of years in the life of porn star, Stacy Valentine, a mid-Western young housewife who ditched a domineering husband to pursue [...]
Cars
(2006) dir. John Lasseter, Joe Ranft
viewed: 06/24/06 at the Century 20 Daly City, Daly City, CA
From the first time I saw a trailer for this, I thought “This is going to be the first bad film that Pixar has made.” From concept to design, this seemed like an idea for 1984 computer animation, not 2006 [...]
Jules et Jim
(1962) dir. François Truffaut
viewed: 06/18/06
I had an interesting experience with this film. For some cockamamie reason, somewhere in my convoluted brain, I forgot that this was a Truffaut film and thought it was a Jean-Luc Godard film. Even from renting it, sticking it into the DVD player and watching the entirety of the film. It was [...]
The Proposition
(2005) dir. John Hillcoat
viewed: 06/06/06 at the Lumiere Theater, SF, CA
Written and scored by Nick Cave, The Proposition is a gritty and gory Western set in the wilds of Australia, a morality tale with its own morality left significantly ambiguous. Directed by Australian John Hillcoat, who also directed the other Nick Cave-written film [...]
The Break-Up
(2006) dir. Peyton Reed
viewed: 06/06/06 at the CineArts @ Empire Theater, SF, CA
Billed and marketed and most likely intended to be a comedy, The Break-Up is starkly unfunny. Unlike many comedies that are utterly lacking in humor, this film doesn’t crash and burn in typical terms. Ultimately, what unfolds is more like [...]
Prozac Nation
(2001) dir. Erik Skjoldbjærg
viewed: 06/03/06
This movie is bad.
Years ago, in an undergraduate screenwriting class, I noted that one of the most lame ideas is writing a story about a person’s first year in college. It’s often a revelatory time for people, but it’s often generic, despite seeming otherwise, and is deluded with narcicism, as frequently [...]
X-Men: The Last Stand
(2006) dir. Brett Ratner
viewed: 06/02/06 at the AMC Loews Metreon 15, SF, CA
Not surprisingly, with the departure of Bryan Singer, director of the first two installments, and the insert of director Brett Ratner, whose claim to fame were the action/comedy Rush Hour series, the X-men franchise hit the rocks of mediocrity rather hard. [...]
