Month: October 2005

Ghosts don’t have to be scary, right? Real life is too frightening right now, what with killer hurricanes and hideous Supreme Court nominees and the terrifying pit that *ER* has fallen into — I don’t think I could deal with traditional spooks at the moment. So instead I’m finding Halloween refuge in pleasant specters, the kind you wouldn’t mind hanging out with and trading witty banter, the kind . I mean, an emphatic *yes* to Alan Rickman in *Truly Madly Deeply,* but he’d have been even better if he was in black-and-white, right?

Ah, this is one of those movies that starts off intriguing and tricksy, gets bogged down after a while with its own inventiveness — so that you sorta squirm your way through the middle of the film, afraid that the film’s gonna end up all hat and no cattle — and redeems itself so tremendously … more…

Saw as a title made perfect sense for Saw, given the prominent, horrifying role played by that piece of hardware. Saw II as a title is pointless, except to set off the Pavlovian response of horror fans and bring them running — it has little in common with its predecessor beyond the washed-out colors and … more…

If it’s otherwise idle hands in Hollywood who make sitcoms, does that officially make them the devil’s work? Cuz it’s always seemed that way to me, with the typical sitcom’s idiotic pretense to ordinariness (*Everybody Loves Raymond* and *The King of Queens,* for instance) as a disguise for the basest stereotypes (*Everybody Loves Raymond* and *The King of Queens,* for instance) and its appeal to the lowest of the lowbrow. Except, of course, when it wants us to go all mushy over some moron learning the true meaning of fatherhood or puppies or Arbor Day — then the LAUGH sign prompting the conditioned studio audience switches over to AWWW and the bread-and-circuses entertainment switches from making fun of beer-bellied blue-collar schmoes with impossibly tolerant and beautiful wives and simply impossible mothers-in-law to asking us to welcome the spirit of Veterans’ Day into our hearts.

You can’t make this stuff up, and they didn’t: this is a true story. Mostly. Domino Harvey was a poor little rich girl who, seeking to escape the deprivations of Beverly Hills and the rough life of a fashion model, turned to — no shit — bounty hunting for adventure and excitement. I say “was” … more…

The Rock, he keeps saying things like ‘We got us a game!’ and ‘Game time!’ as the 22nd-century-or-whatever version of ‘Boo yeah’ or whatever the hell that Marine rallying cry is. Like, as a joke, I guess, a big wink at the fact that this is based on a video game, and a video game that, no matter how awesome or fun it may be, couldn’t be any less about story or character. A movie version of Ms Pac-Man couldn’t be any more or less suited to the big screen than a movie version of *Doom.*

It’s just like Devil’s Advocate except this time it’s Matthew McConaughey (Sahara) getting seduced by Satan, except Pacino ain’t Satan this time around, he’s just Pacino (William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice) doing his Al Pacino imitation, yelling a lot and chewing up the scenery, and if you’ve seen that once, you’ve seen it enough. … more…

I love it when I discover that there’s an unspoken movie rule I didn’t know I knew. Like this one: No Paul Walker movie should be more than 87 minutes long. It’s just common sense, but it only ever occurred to me when I first encountered one that broke it. C’mon, it’s gotta take a … more…