The Core movie review: journey to the center of… you know
Yeah and yee-ha! but this is good old-fashioned pulpy, popcorny B-movie fun only with real science and no giant radioactive mutant anythings.
Armageddon
Mission: Impossible 2 and Shanghai Noon (review)
Can it be a coincidence that both of the big new flicks this Memorial Day weekend — the kickoff for Hollywood’s first summer movie season of the twenty-first century — are basically Hong Kong action movies? The people who think about these kinds of things — current-events journalists, mainly — have already predicted that if the 1900s were the American century, the 2000s may well be the Asian century… but they were speaking economically and politically. I guess it’s probably inevitable that Asia would start to hold some cultural sway in the West, too.
Last Night movie review: TEOTWAWKI
But if you knew when we as a species were going to buy the farm, how would you spend your final hours? That’s the question Canadian filmmaker Don McKellar asks in Last Night, which he wrote, directed, and stars in. Sort of the flip side of movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact, Last Night focuses not on the heroes trying to save the planet from certain doom but instead peeks in at how ordinary people are facing the end of the world.
A Simple Plan (review)
I’ve raved over Bill Paxton before, and I’m gonna do it again now. Paxton is one of American film’s finest and most underappreciated actors — a fact obscured by his own supremely subtle talent. A Simple Plan, an outstanding film and an instant classic, should finally bring him the recognition he deserves.
Gattaca movie review: and you thought political correctness was annoying
If Shakespeare was alive today and writing science fiction, he might come up with something like the distopian GATTACA. GATTACA is real SF, not to be confused with the likes of Armageddon — GATTACA uses the conceits of science fiction not as an excuse for some really cool explosions but to explore what it means to be human.
Armageddon movie review: it’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity
Oh, there will be those who say that Armageddon is mindless fluff, a complete waste of celluloid, a blot on humanity’s collective soul. Heed them not. Director Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer have crafted as fine an educational experience as you will find these days.
