Retellings of fairytales are my jam, y'all. My "Beauty and the Beast" story set in modern-day Hispaniola, in fact, is my most successful story to-date because it was selected for a Year's Best story. So I liked that MALIFICENT is a feminist slant on the Sleeping Beauty fairytale with high, high production values. And Angelina Jolie in her photos ( Read more... )

I'm intrigued by Spike Jonze, who both co-wrote and directed HER. He's always got odd ideas for movies, and he gets some interesting actors involved. Plus, he's sort of reclusive and doesn't do much promotion or many interviews, though he's been on late night TV to promote this movie. It is a small movie (it's not even on the top 15 boxoffice list ( Read more... )

Did you know AMERICAN HUSTLE was called AMERICAN BULLSHIT in the original screenplay? And that it was listed as No.8 on The Blacklist before it went into production? But it makes sense to change the name because a) it's harder to publish and make signage with profanity in the name and b) a huge part of the story was improv'd by the actors, with ( Read more... )

DON JON is the (modestly budgeted) movie written and directed by and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I'm a big fan of JGL! From that kinda hyper little kid on THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN, he's done such interesting movies, and just has loads of charisma. BRICK (a high school noir murder mystery), THE LOOKOUT (amazing movie), INCEPTION (he was the ( Read more... )

O'course I had to see AUSTENLAND! As a fairly well-educated, if not downright nerdy, woman, I am required to be a huge fan of Jane Austen. Ironically, I'm more a fan of well-done adaptations of Austen than reading her actual books. (While her characters and plots enthrall, I don't like epistolary style work, and her need to be ladylike makes for ( Read more... )

When I saw RIDDICK with J4 last weekend, we were preening about how we were such scifi hipsters that we'd deciphered Vin Diesel's appeal 13 years ago, before FAST & FURIOUS (and the dozen sequels that followed it). We'd become intriqued with Diesel because of him playing a light-sensitive badass named Riddick in PITCH BLACK, a low-budget but very ( Read more... )

I give this twisty action movie 2 GUNS high marks mostly because it's an awesome script. Twisty, trippy, funny dialog, vivid characters and setting -- including the naval base in Corpus Christi (where my best friend senior year, Kathy, drug me off to dances with the sailors). And then acting is top rate too -- Denzel Washington is back in my good ( Read more... )

I'm happy about the Sandra Bullock + Melissa McCarthy zany cop movie THE HEAT for meta reasons. The script by first-time movie writer Katie Dippold is actually not that good, not very well structured, and doesn't really do much story work to make the two women become best friends. Their animus is clear and makes sense. Sandra Bullock is a tight- ( Read more... )

Thought I was seeing PACIFIC RIM on 3D iMAX, as suggested by people online, but it wasn't. It did have the seat-rumbling technology and surround sound going on, and I on-purpose chose one of the interactive seats. Many of the negative reviews I've read (and they've been about 50:50 good:bad) said that it was frustrating to have massively huge ( Read more... )

I saw World War Z with J4 about a month ago now and forgot to post a review. I thought it was a solid movie, with extremely tension-filled scenes. There was a lot of press over the years about how hard Brad Pitt and the producers had to work to get the movie done. The source book, by the son of Mel Brooks, was episodic, like diary entries, jumping ( Read more... )