29 Sep Wolfs (2024)
Sundance Sundown One of the advantages of age is that I’ve seen older films when they were new. If you consider film viewing as at least a craft — as I do — then it matters that you are able to bring the personal anchoring of...
Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)
The King vs. The King of the Dead.
Filmmaker(s): Don Coscarelli
Bubba Ho-tep tells the "true" story of what really did become of Elvis Presley. We find Elvis as an elderly resident in an East Texas rest home, who switched identities with an Elvis impersonator years before his "death," then missed his chance to switch back. He must team up with JFK and fight an ancient Egyptian mummy for the souls of their fellow residents.
28 Sep Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)
The Singing Detective For those who don't know it, 'The Singing Detective' was the only decent thing I know that TeeVee has produced. It was one of those longish movies they call a miniseries. It featured a man in a hospital who imagined himself to be...
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Where will you be?
Filmmaker(s): Roland Emmerich
After years of increases in the greenhouse effect, havoc is wreaked globally in the form of catastrophic hurricanes, tornadoes, tidal waves, floods and the beginning of a new Ice Age. Paleoclimatologist Jack Hall tries to warn the world while also shepherding to safety his son, trapped in New York after the city is overwhelmed by the start of the new big freeze.
22 Sep The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Burned Books Why oh why do makers of bad films sometimes put a really good actor in a minor part? It just makes everything else seem cheap. In this case, Ian Holm has a few small scenes that anchor the film. He plays the part that...
Titanic (1997)
Nothing on Earth could come between them.
Filmmaker(s): James Cameron
101-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater tells the story of her life aboard the Titanic, 84 years later. A young Rose boards the ship with her mother and fiancé. Meanwhile, Jack Dawson and Fabrizio De Rossi win third-class tickets aboard the ship. Rose tells the whole story from Titanic's departure through to its death—on its first and last voyage—on April 15, 1912.
22 Sep Titanic (1997)
The Huge Machine I admit to a certain admiration of Cameron. Alone among special effects manipulators, he has a solid sense of what works cinematically. When he invests, he invests in a world. That world envelops us with its completeness and magnitude. It is the opposite...
2012 (2009)
We Were Warned.
Filmmaker(s): Roland Emmerich
Dr. Adrian Helmsley, part of a worldwide geophysical team investigating the effect on the earth of radiation from unprecedented solar storms, learns that the earth's core is heating up. He warns U.S. President Thomas Wilson that the crust of the earth is becoming unstable and that without proper preparations for saving a fraction of the world's population, the entire race is doomed. Meanwhile, writer Jackson Curtis stumbles on the same information. While the world's leaders race to build "arks" to escape the impending cataclysm, Curtis struggles to find a way to save his family. Meanwhile, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes of unprecedented strength wreak havoc around the world.
21 Sep 2012 (2009)
Foreground - Background When you make a film that is nothing but flavoured special effects, when you make the matter of those effects into a character, you have two decisions to make. The first is whether you are dealing with object or environment. This is a fairly...
Man from Reno (2014)
The greatest mystery she's ever written. And it could be her last…
Filmmaker(s): Dave Boyle
A mystery outside of San Francisco brings together small-town sheriff Paul Del Moral, Japanese author Aki Akahori, and a traveler from Reno who soon disappears, leaving behind his suitcase and a trail of questions.
20 Sep Man from Reno (2014)
Shell Game Alas, I continue to find comments original posted to IMDB, deleted because of a complaint by an unseen adversary — and therefore lost. However, a re-viewing brings this later comment. Spoilers here. This is much like ‘Chinatown’ with some ‘Vertigo’ mixed in. Both noirs of...
Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
Did she do it?
Filmmaker(s): Justine Triet
A woman is suspected of her husband's murder, and their blind son faces a moral dilemma as the sole witness.
20 Sep Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
Pairy Maison The framing here is a courtroom drama, very simple and straightforward. A process that is (mostly) inhuman with a prosecutor we want to hate. We never discover what actually happened, and the craft here is in taking a simple ambiguity — did this woman...
Quantum Cowboys (2022)
Observation always affects the outcome.
Filmmaker(s): Geoff Marslett
Two hapless drifters, Frank and Bruno, team up with Linde to recover her land and trek across 1870's Southern Arizona to find an elusive frontier musician. The complex quantum time theory is blended with philosophical musings about art as the way we understand our history and memories, with gunfights, horses, dance halls, cacti, and saloons!
19 Sep Quantum Cowboys (2022)
Overlapping Takes This a bit of a philosophical stew but with naive ingredients. I don’t know how many movies we’ll get with this notion of parallel universes, each of which are occupied, or can be. But set that aside and accept it as a useful trope. In...
The Wild Robot (2024)
Filmmaker(s): Chris Sanders
After a shipwreck, an intelligent robot called Roz is stranded on an uninhabited island. To survive the harsh environment, Roz bonds with the island's animals and cares for an orphaned baby goose.
15 Sep The Wild Robot (2024)
Programmed At the front I have to say that both the adults were affected, cried, emoted. This is a Mommy story in a sea of Daddy stories, especially animated ‘family’ fare. It pulled on some formulaic strings, enough for me to say that this knows the...
Twisters (2024)
Chase. Ride. Survive.
Filmmaker(s): Lee Isaac Chung
As storm season intensifies, the paths of former storm chaser Kate Carter and reckless social-media superstar Tyler Owens collide when terrifying phenomena never seen before are unleashed. The pair and their competing teams find themselves squarely in the paths of multiple storm systems converging over central Oklahoma in the fight of their lives.
25 Aug Twisters (2024)
Surrey with the Fringe on Top It might be enough to build a movie around special effects that don’t involve a fight or monsters. These usually fall into the catastrophe category. The key to that category it seems, is the noir necessity that the catastrophe happens...
