(2007) dir. Noah Baumbach
viewed: 02/26/08
After his success with The Squid and the Whale (2005), there was a lot of expectation of writer/director Noah Baumbach’s latest film, written for Nicole Kidman and Baumbach’s wife, actress Jennifer Jason Leigh. But from the get-go the film got negative reviews. From both word of mouth and reviews across the board, [...]
Archive of entries posted on February 2008
Margot at the Wedding
Colma: The Musical
(2006) dir. Richard Wong
viewed: 02/22/08
Colma, for those of you that don’t have a Bay Area history, is a small town just south of the city that among its purely suburban strip malls and malls, is also the planting ground for the Bay Area’s dead. It’s the town where “the dead outnumber the living” and is [...]
Day Watch
(2006) dir. Timur Bekmambetov
viewed: 02/21/08
I did note after watching Night Watch (2004), that despite not being overly impressed with it that I would probably see its sequel. Well, true to my word, I did. And I don’t completely regret it. In fact, I kind of liked it more than the first one.
Day Watch, as its known [...]
In Bruges
(2008) dir. Martin McDonagh
viewed: 02/19/08 at Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, SF, CA
I can’t hardly say the last time I went to the Kabuki, but it’s been years. When I first moved to San Francisco in December of 1990, the Kabuki was the only real megaplax, major mutliple screen movie theater and was a real center for [...]
The Brave One
(2007) dir. Neil Jordan
viewed: 02/18/08
As I started to watch The Brave One, I wondered why I had chosen to queue it and rent it. A female version of Death Wish (1974), a revenge tale, vengeance through vigilanteism. A character who is thrown from the “regular” world into a world of violence, reacting by picking up [...]
Persepolis
(2007) dir. Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi
viewed: 02/18/08 at CineArts @ the Empire, SF, CA
Adapted from the comics of Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical, Persepolis, and adapted and co-directed by Satrapi, the animated film of her story is a poignant and sad coming of age story, set against the changing culture of Iran in the 1970’s through the [...]
The Birth of a Nation
(1915) dir. D.W. Griffith
viewed: 02/16/08
The Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith’s magnum opus, one of the most significant films in American film history, not merely controversial, even today, almost 100 years after its creation, is no simple film to approach. The fact is that I’d never seen it until last night. I’d seen Intolerance (1916) [...]
The Spiderwick Chronicles
(2008) dir. Mark Waters
viewed: 02/15/08 at AMC Loews Metreon 16 with IMAX, SF, CA
Children’s literature, or just plain old kids books, are either going through a great period of growth and exceptionality or simply one of over-exploitation. And while the latter is probably more the case, there is some potential hope that the former may [...]
Female Trouble
(1974) dir. John Waters
viewed: 02/13/08
John Waters’ follow up to his hilarious and punk as hell film Pink Flamingos (1972), Female Trouble, is the one of his films with which I had the most familiarity. I have a good friend who could watch it over and over, laughing hysterically at all the classic lines, quoting them ad [...]
Samurai Assassin
(1965) dir. Kihachi Okamoto
viewed: 02/12/08
After a friend turned me on to Samurai films earlier this year, and specifically to Kihachi Okamoto, whose The Sword of Doom (1966) and Kill! (1969), started out my film-watching year, I turned to yet another of his works in the genre, his 1965 film Samurai Assassin.
It too features amazing cinematography, a fascinating [...]
