Practical Summer movies, what a zone to enter! What a collection of thrills, disappointments and adventures of different kinds! Sometimes for me they take me to a sublime place: “King Kong”, “Van Helsing”. Most times it is just noise. If it is cinematic, I’ll credit it with...
A petty thief posing as an actor is brought to Los Angeles for an unlikely audition and finds himself in the middle of a murder investigation along with his high school dream girl and a detective who's been training him for his upcoming role...
Gossamer Connections I’m like most people I guess. For me, there are movies that are “just” movies, things I enter for fun. And there are others I enter as part of lucid living, what are usually called “art” films. Its an artificial division that exists only because of...
In 1933 New York, an overly ambitious movie producer coerces his cast and hired ship crew to travel to mysterious Skull Island, where they encounter Kong, a giant ape who is immediately smitten with the leading lady.
The Tempest We can all celebrate. Jackson has now solidly replaced Spielberg. Most folks know that the 1933 "Kong" changed the world in fundamental ways. The world of movie imagination was in its earliest phases, so quite apart from the innovations of animation and dramatic scoring, the...
King Corn is a fun and crusading journey into the digestive tract of our fast food nation where one ultra-industrial, pesticide-laden, heavily-subsidized commodity dominates the food pyramid from top to bottom – corn. Fueled by curiosity and a dash of naiveté, two college buddies return to their ancestral home of Greene, Iowa to figure out how a modest kernel conquered America. With the help of some real farmers, oodles of fertilizer and government aide, and some genetically modified seeds, the friends manage to grow one acre of corn. Along the way, they unlock the hilarious absurdities and scary but hidden truths about America’s modern food system in this engrossing and eye-opening documentary.
Field of Dreams Modern documentaries fascinate me. In theory, the documentary category is an investigation, explanation or essay on something, presumably something both real and true. Because there is the supposition that the thing is interesting of worth hearing about for some reason, one assumes that most...
Emma has left Russia to live with her husband in Italy. Now a member of a powerful industrial family, she is the respected mother of three, but feels unfulfilled. One day, Antonio, a talented chef and her son's friend, makes her senses kindle.
Outsides That Penetrate This is an amazing construction, turned to profound and lasting effect. Rarely do sophisticated technique and human insight coincide, and I think we have producer/actress Tilda Swinton to thank. Quite apart from everything else, the woman learned Italian for this, with a Russian...
Two narrators, one seen and one unseen, discuss possible connections between a series of paintings. The on-screen narrator walks through three-dimensional reproductions of each painting, featuring real people, sometimes moving, in an effort to explain the series' significance.
Thieves There’s a blanket term in film criticism, reflexivity. Its an odd word. It denotes something where outside and inside are merged or mixed, where viewer and viewed overlap. And yet the word itself is not reflexive, it stands aloof. While the root comes from reflection,...
Multi-platinum rap superstars Redman and Method Man star as Jamal and Silas, two regular guys who smoke something magical, ace their college entrance exams and wind up at Harvard. Ivy League ways are strange but Silas and Jamal take it in a stride -- until their supply of supernatural smoke runs dry. That's when they have to start living by their wits and rely on their natural resources to make the grade.
Not Stale These things play a game, a delicate game. The idea is primarily to make fun of stereotypes while at the same time exploiting those. They satisfy the dummy watchers while making fun of them. That’s a long tradition in humour and especially ethnic humour, black...
A group of unwitting teens are stranded near a strange wax museum and soon must fight to survive and keep from becoming the next exhibit.
Melted Me A good movie may be like anything else: long periods of ordinariness with a few memorable bits. We tend to recall and savour only those memorable bits. For me, that was this movie. Yes, it was ordinary: hokey, stupid, bad acting and such. Yes, the...
A genetically engineered assassin with deadly aim, known only as "Agent 47" eliminates strategic targets for a top-secret organization. But when he's double-crossed, the hunter becomes the prey as 47 finds himself in a life-or-death game of international intrigue.
Clones I found this solid and competent. The curious thing is that what it did well, it did not because of what it is, but because it did not stick closely to the world of the video game. This is also why the fan base rejected...
Video game developer Clayton Software enlists the talents of a misfit group of programmers to develop the scariest computer combat game: EVILUTION. With four weeks to bring the game to market and a million-dollar bonus on the line, they utilize a telemetry suit to render a 3-D version of the onscreen player. But when a power surge gives the hard drive a mind of its own, the suit comes to life to play the game for real and the programming team find themselves in the middle of a chilling virtual nightmare beyond their wildest imagination.
Makes Itself I have several movieland people I follow because what they do is pretty interesting. I have a (much larger) list of people that I follow casually because they show promise, or have done something interesting in the past. This little TeeVee movie popped up because...
