Piranha II is James Cameron’s first feature movie, and Avatar is the most recent. How has his moral message and story-telling evolved? In Piranha II, you were likely to get killed by a carnivorous flying fish if: You are female and naked. You have sex unconnected to romance. You’re a somewhat ridiculous older woman....
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Transformers 2: ROTFL (Review)
After all, Michael Bay KNOWS IT SUCKS. But he's counting his money and laughing at us as we sit through it anyway.
Virtuality: Pilot or Movie?
Fox ran a “movie” called Virtuality tonight. Produced by Ronald Moore, the genius who crafted Battlestar Galactica, I thought it would be worth a look. It skitters dangerously close to rehashing things that have been done well already, but there is a core of original thought going on here. In fact, if things evolve...
Fake Imax? Is it worth the money? (also, Star Trek)
What good is building a classy brand if you can’t whore it out for big bucks? Clothing manufacturers do it, chefs add their names to canned soups. Why not Imax? The latest controversy is that “Imax” movies are being shown on relatively small screens, for full price. The Imax experience used to mean one...
Review: Crank 2, High Voltage
I love this movie. I’m unable to say why. I can link superlatives together, describe awesome over-the-top scenes, but the magic is in the attitude. From the opening credits which took the last scene from the first movie and did it 8-bit video-game format, we knew exactly what level to take the movie. Everything...
Not so Taken
Last night I saw Taken with three guy friends. A fourth joined us for dinner, but bailed before the movie started. Something about having to work on President’s Day. Whiner. Anyway, preconception was that it would be a quality action movie. After all, Liam Neeson? But 30 minutes in, I turned to one friend...
Slumdog Millionaire
As I just mentioned, once the Oscar nominations are announced a lot of people go to see the best picture nominees who might normally not be interested in that genre. I don’t really like “heartwarming”. But Slumdog Millionaire is getting a lot of buzz. Since I just had to sit through a brunch where...
A Quantum of Solace: Pretty Good Bond Movie
I realize I saw awesome too much. To me, many things are awesome, at least in the moment. Later the experience fades and I can compare the awesome moment with many other moments, and awesome fades to average. The latest Bond movie, for instance. We walked out of the theater, to a nearby restaurant,...
Max Payne, Minimal Fun
There’s a movie in my head. I built it out of trailers for Max Payne. It has powerful, scary villains, a tortured hero, and the eternal, supernatural struggle between good and evil. It is laden with Norse mythology, and punctuated with intense set pieces that include guns and explosions and Valkyrie. It could be...
Avatar vs. Star Wars
One podcast I listen to made an interesting comparison between Avatar and Star Wars. Each movie raised the bar for blockbusters, as well as working in a genre that can be described as Space Opera. A little too easy and facile for Science Fiction, but set in a future universe. In fact, both movies...
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