Planet of the Apes (2001)

Planet of the Apes (2001) – Sigh… so one of the benefits of having the rather excellent Rise of the Planet of the Apes come out last year was that it would wipe the stain of this ill-conceived remake from our cultural memory. Not so much. It was on cable a little while back and my … Continue reading

Rock of Ages (2012)

Rock of Ages (2012) – The vast majority of my reviews tend to be positive, in case you hadn’t noticed. Or rather they range from lukewarm appreciation to outright enthusiastic. Some bad ones slip in but overall they’re favorable. I do indeed like most movies I see. That’s usually because if a movie looks like … Continue reading

If I had my own damn Award Show…

Well, the Oscars are coming up in a couple days. I’ll get my picks and predictions and whatnot posted Sunday morning and then try to do some sort of real-time reaction thing like I tried doing with the Emmys a while back… In the meantime I figured I’d chime in with what I actually thought … Continue reading

The Ides of March (2011)

The Ides of March (2011) – I have been in college for a long time, mostly due to dropping out a lot and changing majors. At a certain point I figured I’d just pick a god damn major and stick with it so I could just get a degree and get it the hell over … Continue reading

Too Big to Fail (2011)

Too Big to Fail (2011) — This movie is melodramatic and heavy-handed yet, for me anyway, still managed to be gripping and entertaining. It mostly exists as an acting showcase for the likes of William Hurt, Billy Crudup, Paul Giamatti, James Woods and a bunch of others. It dramatizes the financial crisis and subsequent bailout, … Continue reading

The King’s Speech (2010)

The King’s Speech(2010) — Who would have guessed that elocution lessons could make for a movie this good?  Apparently King George VI of England (who only ascended to the throne because his brother abdicated) had a very pronounced stammer.  Being King in the age of radio (the 1930s), one needed to make speeches (especially when … Continue reading

Meandering [Slightly Drunken] Thoughts on the 2011 Emmys

So I figured if I’m going to blogging about television, I should probably weigh in on the Emmys. I realized this though as the Emmys were already in progress and I had been drinking (I started to sober up somewhere around the Drama categories). These are my meandering real-time thoughts as I watched the broadcast. … Continue reading

Shoot ‘Em Up (2007)

Shoot ‘Em Up (2007) — The late film critic Pauline Kael once saw a European poster for a James Bond movie that had the words “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” on it. She said that those four words (or more accurately two words each repeated) summarized everything we love about the movies. Michael Davis’s Shoot ‘Em … Continue reading

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Saving Private Ryan (1998) — That Spielberg kid might just have a future in the pictures…  This movie is kind of odd tonally.  It manages to be somehow unrelenting and sentimental at the same time.  That shouldn’t really work but it does.  The basic premise is not really an easy one.  What is one guy’s … Continue reading