handcrafted by maryann johanson (human) | 100% free of AIs and algorithms
It’s weird to think that there’s an entire generation of children out there for whom Glenn Close will be associated with kidnapped puppies and not with boiling rabbits. But 102 Dalmatians seals it: Her Cruella is back, vampier and funnier than ever, and kids will love her all the more. Their parents will have a fine time as well if they tag along to the multiplex.
Don’t believe the marketing of Bounce. This isn’t a romantic comedy. I can understand why Miramax took the happy route — it’s a lot easier to get an audience in to see a film if they believe it’s happy, funny, and, well, bouncy than if they knew it was a drama about grief, pain, guilt, and what it takes to get over such things. But don’t let reality deter you: Bounce is a genuinely moving and engrossing film brought to warm and authentic life by its gifted and intelligent stars.
I don’t think it’s venturing too far into hyperbole to call this, the followup to The Sixth Sense from writer/director M. Night Shyamalan, a work of transcendent filmic genius, one that acknowledges the audience’s expectations, confounds them, rebuilds them, and ends up using them to brilliant, astonishing advantage.
But those who insist on misconstruing the Grinch will certainly be delighted with Ron Howard’s new live-action adaptation, because it subverts Dr. Seuss’s point in exactly the same way. And the result is a bizarre and uncomfortable film.
And the result of all that creative effort? PG-13 pornography, an SI swimsuit issue for the big screen with lots of slo-mo hair tossing, blouses unbuttoned down to there, asses shoved in the camera, closeups on moist lips. Vapid and self-consciously kitschy, these gals are a 13-year-old boy’s fantasy of a strong woman. This is Hollywood aiming T&A at little girls, but I wouldn’t let any little girl I cared about see this film.
Oh what a wonderful movie is Wonder Boys. Bitterly funny about the creative life and sharply observant of how inspiration can be both encouraged and crushed, this is one of the best movies ever about what it means to be a writer.
In an attempt to make himself feel like a man and impress the girl of his dreams, nebbishy restaurant cook Yasuda (Tomoro Taguchi) concocts a scheme to rob a bank. But his careful plans fall to pieces, and try as he might to salvage them, things go from bad to worse, and he finds himself … more…
The wish to understand “the fundamental interconnectedness of all things” is what drove Douglas Adams’s philosophical detective Dirk Gently, and I’ve adopted that as my personal motto. Which is probably why I was fascinated by this new documentary from director Michael Apted. Through interviews with seven smart and witty scientists — pharmaceutical chemist Gertrude Elion, … more…
Total Recall is one of my guilty pleasures. It’s not a great movie. It’s not even the one really good science-fiction movie director Paul Verhoeven (hollow, startroop) has made — that was Robocop. But it’s a helluva lot of fun, and it moves fast enough that you never notice how silly it is till later.
Sewn together out of the scraps of far superior SF and action films, Red Planet is a frankenmovie, a soulless and charmless film that desperately hopes we won’t see the stitches that barely hold its disparate pieces together. Some mad producer somewhere saw the final cut and screamed ‘It’s alive! It’s alive!’ But, alas, it isn’t.
sample sponsored post (sponsored) - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Fusce quis risus odio.
