(2008) dir. Steven Spielberg
viewed: 05/25/08 at the Castro Theatre, SF, CA
Much like the second coming of the Star Wars franchise, the latest release of a new Indiana Jones film is for many, many people, an opportunity to step back to their excitement and enjoyment of some time ago. It’s been nearly 20 years since the [...]
Archive of entries posted on May 2008
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Gojira
(1954) dir. Ishirô Honda
viewed: 05/25/08
The giant rubber monster movie that started it all, Gojira (a.k.a. Godzilla), was released with some pomp a couple of years ago with its original Japanese name and all of it’s orginal footage and dialog with subtitles for the non-Japanese speakers of the world. As a kid, growing up with Godzilla, [...]
The Blob
(1958) dir. Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr., Russell S. Doughten, Jr.
viewed: 05/23/08
Originally, movie night with the kids this week was meant to feature Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965), another personal childhood favorite long since not seen. But when the disc of that film failed to play in the DVD player, I had to resort to a [...]
Rude Boy
(1980) dir. Jack Hazan, David Mingay
viewed: 05/22/08
This film, a feeble attempt at making a narrative story of a drunken would-be roadie for The Clash during their earliest heydey, is a jumbled and often boring mess. Cobbled together as it was, the film attempts to capture the zeitgeist of late-1970’s England, the racism, the conservatism, poverty, [...]
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
(2007) dir. Sydney Lumet
viewed: 05/21/08
This movie, which received a great deal of critical praise when it was released last year, seemed to fly under the mainstream radar quite a bit, which is a shame. The critics were right. This film is surprisingly strong, energetic, and intense. The primary trope of critical discussion has focussed on [...]
Speed Racer
(2008) dir. Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski
viewed: 05/17/08 at the Fremont Theater, San Luis Obispo, CA
At first, I thought I was going to end up seeing this film with my son, who had shown avid interest during previews, but then it’s long length, bad reviews, and loss of notice by my son (who is far more [...]
Teeth
(2007) dir. Mitchell Lichtenstein
viewed: 05/12/08
“This pussy has teeth!”
That is a quote that I’ve always remembered from the cult classic Liquid Sky (1982), from a performance art piece in a film that is essentially a performance art piece. But just to say, even as a teen with no context or knowledge of history or anatamy or feminism, I [...]
Still Life
(2006) dir. Zhang Ke Jia
viewed: 05/11/08 at the Roxie Film Center, SF, CA
A few months back, I’d read about Still Life in the New York Times or something and became quite interested in the work of filmmaker Zhang Ke Jia, one of a group of Chinese filmmakers referred to at the “Sixth Generation”. A month of [...]
My Kid Could Paint That
(2007) dir. Amir Bar-Lev
viewed: 05/11/08
The story that spawned this documentary, that of a 4 year old Binghampton, NY girl whose abstract paintings were being shown and sold in galleries in New York, had come to my attention back when the story first gained mainstream media attention in an article in The New York Times four [...]
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
(2003) dir. Errol Morris
viewed: 05/09/08
I had always intended to see this film when it first came out. Errol Morris is probably one of the more well-known and perhaps important documentary filmmakers of the past 20 years, and this film, stemming from a long interview or series of interviews with Robert S. McNamara, one-time Secretary of [...]
