(2008) dir. Timur Bekmambetov
viewed: 06/29/08 at CineArts @ the Empire Theater, SF, CA
From director Timur Bekmambetov, the fine filmmaker who brough us the Russian Sci-Fi/action films Night Watch (2004) and Day Watch (2006), Hollywood slings Wanted onto movie screens across America much like the key image from the film itself,…like curving a bullet’s path by whipping one’s arm. [...]
Archive of entries posted on June 2008
Wanted
Duck, You Sucker
(1971) dir. Sergio Leone
viewed: 06/29/08
Duck, You Sucker, known alternately as both A Fistful of Dynamite and Once Upon a Time… the Revolution, both titles more easily associated with the brilliant director and co-writer of the film, Sergio Leone (he of A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and [...]
WALL-E
(2008) dir. Andrew Stanton
viewed: 06/28/08 at Century San Francisco Centre, SF, CA
The latest from Pixar (Ratatouille (2007), Cars (2006), Monsters, Inc. (2001)), the cream of the American digital feature animation crop, WALL-E, is an attempt at the higher eschelons of art and movie magic. And it almost gets there. It comes close.
Directed by Andrew Stanton whose previous directing [...]
Jumper
(2008) dir. Doug Liman
viewed: 06/27/08
Director Doug Liman has had an interesting career thusfar, but when Jumper was released, I read an article about him that cast him in an odd light. He’s considered a bit difficult and tends to run his films overbudget. Having started out in the indie world with Swingers (1996) and Go (1999), [...]
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
(2002) dir. Chris Columbus
viewed: 06/27/08
There’s been a lot of discussion in our house about the PG vs. PG-13 ratings. My son is a bit obsessed with films that are PG-13, partially due to the fact that he wasn’t allowed to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). He fantasizes about developing his [...]
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
(2007) dir. Jon Turteltaub
viewed: 06/22/08
Not exactly at the top of my list of films to see, I may have even made comment somewhere that I probably wouldn’t ever see these films even in my Nicolas Cage slumming that I like to do. But I think, influenced by some reviews stating that these movies were made [...]
Frankenstein Conquers the World
(1965) dir. Ishirô Honda
viewed: 06/20/08
Originally intended to be one of my “with the kids” series, I just ended up watching this one on my own, simply because I felt like watching it. Directed by Ishirô Honda, director of the original Gojira (1954) and several of its other Godzilla sequels, Frankenstein Conquers the World was a personal [...]
Diary of the Dead
(2007) dir. George A. Romero
viewed: 06/20/08
George A. Romero has long established his place in American cinema, not just the horror genre in which he wound up working in almost exclusively and influencing and creating. From his zombie films, starting with the amazing Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), and Day [...]
Bubba Ho-Tep
(2002) dir. Don Coscarelli
viewed: 06/18/08
Bruce Campbell fans are pretty much geeks.
Which is something that I think they’d be proud to agree with.
Campbell, whose career as a B-movie star was cemented forever in his part in Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead movies, has had a long career of oddball roles, some big, some small, all over the [...]
The Foot Fist Way
(2006) dir. Jody Hill
viewed: 06/17/08 at AMC Loews Metreon 16 with IMAX, SF, CA
Produced a couple of years ago, but just recently picked up for major (or semi-major) distribution by a company affliliated with Will Farrell and others, The Foot Fist Way has been getting some pretty good chuckles in reviews that I have read [...]
