A self-taught critic and genuine movie geek
Bruce Willis with hair! When’s the last time you saw that? We’re talking bleached-blond surfer-dude hair that flops over his forehead. And yet, after the first moment of shock, it doesn’t look all that silly, which is a pretty impressive achievement, I’d say.
Oh, you knew I’d have to review this one. My head’s still spinning, but I’ll see what I can do. It’s my fault; I went to the theatre with the Ultrascreen across town, and everything was so huge! It was hard to read the credits, and some of the fight scenes left me reeling.
I always try to avoid learning too much about a film before I see it. Reading other critics’ reviews is out — I’m the Movie Critic Next Door because I’m not a professional and I don’t know what I’m doing. Wait, that didn’t come out right. I mean I’m not supposed to sound like every other film critic out there… and, well, I’m pretty sure I’ve succeeded at that, for better or for worse.
Continue reading “Avatar”
In 2070 or thereabouts, it’s terribly difficult to dispose of a body because everyone’s tagged with some sort of electronic chip. Like what people do with their cats and dogs, I guess. So when a crime lord wants someone to disappear, there’s a whole extra level of difficulty involved. Enter the miracle of time travel. I was curious to discover if it was invented specifically to solve this problem, but they don’t say.
I’m not sure if the dots are really necessary, but that’s how the title’s listed on imdb. Now, maybe some of you haven’t seen the first movie, 28 Days Later (not to be confused with the Sandra Bullock film, 28 Days, because except for the titles, they have no similarities whatsoever), but that really doesn’t matter. There are no characters returning from the first film, unless you count the poor beleaguered city of London, and all you really need to know is explained in the captions at the beginning.
First this movie was called Slusho, then it was called Cheese, and finally the production crew realized they needed a real title, so they ended up with Cloverfield… which still isn’t a real title, it having been used as a code name to disguise what they were working on, but it did certainly help add to the air of mystery while they were hyping it. People have been wondering what Cloverfield is supposed to mean for months, and what more could a moviemaker want? Well, maybe a Steadicam, but I suppose that wouldn’t have given quite the effect they were after.
It’s only sort of a terrace, and there’s no lake around anywhere that I could see, but that’s the name of the place. And the movie isn’t actually the action-packed, how-will-they-survive thriller the previews imply, either. But Samuel L. Jackson lives on Lakeview Terrace with his teenage daughter and pre-teen son, his wife having died some years earlier. He’s an LA patrol officer, and he aims to keep his street clean if it kills you. Other than that, it seems like a nice place to live.
Longtime readers (Hey, you never know, I might have a few of those) may recall that I described Sunshine as being a little like 28 Days Later in space, because so many of the same people worked on both films. Now we have Quarantine, which is 28 Days Later in a Los Angeles apartment building (the darkest apartment building on earth), only without any of the same actors or crew, and not quite as good.
Don’t worry, you know I have to review The Simpsons, but that’ll be tomorrow instead. Yep, it’s a double dose this weekend, to make up for the fact that I couldn’t bring myself to watch either John Travolta in drag or Adam Sandler trying to be a comedian last weekend. But this weekend I had almost an embarrassment of choices, and I’d been wanting to see Sunshine just because it sounded cool.
It’s enemies plural because there are several of them — and you may even have heard of Pretty Boy Floyd, for instance, though you have to look fast to see him in this movie — but it’s really all about Public Enemy #1, of course, Mr. John Dillinger himself. You can tell he’s the important one, not to mention the charismatic one, because they got Johnny Depp to play him. (And let me just add here how incredibly relieved I am that they didn’t let Leonardo DiCaprio play him.
Continue reading “Public Enemies”