Zack Snyder’s 300 is filled with as many bad lines as it is unintentional ironies. The worst of the first: “My heart is filled with hate.” The most striking of the latter: that truth and freedom is represented by burly men with beards who all dress alike, while the deviants, body piercers, and transsexuals apparently side with tyranny and ( Read more... )

Michael Caine’s character tells us that every great magic trick consists of three acts: a beginning that shows you something ordinary, a middle in which the extraordinary is done with that ordinary thing, and an end, where you’re shocked by something you’ve never seen before. Unfortunately, The Prestige fails to follow this outline, providing a ( Read more... )

Thank god for strong women in movies. Thank god for developed characters, interesting action scenes, and moody filmmaking. Thank god for realistic responses to unreal situations. In short, thank god for Neil Marshall and "The Descent ( Read more... )

This movie has all of the right elements, but the glue used to bind them together is bad, and they were put together incorrectly. We see some right out in front the whole time, when all we needed was a little glimpse, while whole fields of fertile thought imagery are left barren and untouched ( Read more... )

Peter Jackson knows how to make a movie. Not only that, but he knows how to pick a story ABOUT which to make a movie. It doesn’t seem like much: boat goes to island, finds ape, captures ape, ape gets loose in NYC, climbs Empire State Building, gets shot, dies. But inside that classic monster story, there’s so much more. There’s intrigue, greed, ( Read more... )

Thanksgiving, 2005. Florida = sunny, warm, nice. Reminder to self: the grass here is itchy. Made my first mashed potatoes, very yummy. Made vegetarian stuffing with Jen, a bit, um . . . large. Should slice the bits smaller next time. Ate entirely too much pie ( Read more... )