(2008) dir. Howard McCain
viewed: 05/26/09
When I heard about a movie that involved a spaceship, an alien monster and Vikings, I thought, “Well, that oughta be interesting!” If you’re like me, you might imagine a bunch of Vikings running around shooting laser guns or something. Maybe something like Starship Troopers (1997) with horns on their helmets. [...]
Archive of entries posted on May 2009
Outlander
Taken
(2008) dir. Pierre Morel
viewed: 05/24/09
Lean, taut, and action-packed, Taken may not be the best action film of all time or even of the last year or two, but it’s all meat. At 93 minutes, a significant part of which is beginning and ending credits, it’s not a very long film.
Liam Neeson plays a dad whose [...]
Terminator Salvation
(2009) dir. McG
viewed: 05/21/09 at CineArts @ the Empire Theater, SF, CA
Like the titular Terminator, the franchise itself lifts itself from the scrapheap to keep clawing and destroying ahead, this time not only without director James Cameron, but also without “the Terminator” (now “governator” Arnold Schwarzenegger). Terminator without “the Terminator”? Could it be? Actually, brought [...]
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
(2009) dir. Patrick Tatopoulos
viewed: 05/21/09
Sequel to Underworld (2003) and Underworld: Evolution (2006), Underworld: Rise of the Lycans is missing its two biggest names, star Kate Beckinsale and her husband director Len Wiseman. Wiseman has moved on to bigger and better things it seems, such as Live Free or Die Hard (2007) and Beckinsale seems to be trying to [...]
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
(2008) dir. David Fincher
viewed: 05/18/09
A curious choice of film to watch on my 40th birthday, a movie about a man aging backwards, filled with themes of life, death, aging and love. If I wasn’t thinking enough about such things already, it was effective to be hammered over the head with them for nearly 3 hours [...]
Wendy and Lucy
(2008) dir. Kelly Reichardt
viewed: 05/15/09
Low-key as it is, this earnest story of a young woman crossing the country in her dying car to take a job in an Alaskan cannery is of the ilk of “realist” cinema or something of naturalism. It tries to take on the perspective of the down and out, the fringe [...]
Star Trek
(2009) dir. J.J. Abrams
viewed: 05/15/09 at CineArts @ the Empire Theater, SF, CA
Summer movies. Love ‘em. Hate ‘em. Whatever. They keep a-comin’.
Star Trek is Summer Movie 2009. And honestly, even though it opened on the first week of the summer movie season, it’ll probably be hard to top this summer, which actually looks extremely weak. [...]
Fort Apache
(1948) dir. John Ford
viewed: 05/10/09 at the Stanford Theater, Palo Alto, CA
Part two of the John Wayne/John Ford double bill at the Stanford Theater was Fort Apache, one of Ford’s many films that I hadn’t seen before. Certainly, I wouldn’t classify it as one of his masterworks, but a solid film through and through, starring [...]
The Searchers
(1956) dir. John Ford
viewed: 05/10/09 at the Stanford Theater, Palo Alto, CA
One of the greatest Westerns ever made (my personal favorite) and perhaps one of the greatest movies ever made, John Ford’s awesome film, The Searchers was totally awesome to see on the big screen. Playing as a double feature at the Stanford Theater in [...]
JCVD
(2008) dir. Mabrouk El Mechri
viewed: 05/09/09
When was the last time you watched a Jean-Claude Van Damme film? For me, it was the hilariously awful Double Team (1998) in which he starred along with Dennis Rodman, and that was purely because it was Hong Kong legend Tsui Hark’s first American film (and surprisingly not his last, [...]
