The Great Wall movie review: not to be torn down
Plain pure fun. At its best, it’s Lord of the Rings meets Aliens, with incredible imaginative grandeur and genuinely breathtaking 3D depth.
House of Flying Daggers
female gazing at: Takeshi Kaneshiro
House of Flying Daggers is one of the most amazing, most romantic, most exciting movies I’ve seen… and not just because it was when I fell in love with Takeshi Kaneshiro.
trailer break: ‘Red Cliff’
Take a break from work: watch a trailer… Totally awesome. I so fell in love with Takeshi Kaneshiro in House of Flying Daggers, and he’s just as enticing here as a sort of Jedi warrior. Plus, there’s some cool battles and shit. Red Cliff opens in the U.S. today; it played in U.K. theaters this … more…
best production design of 2004 (plus some other bests and worsts of the year)
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN (encompassing production design, costumes, and makeup) The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou I usually favor invented worlds when picking the year’s best production work… and maybe I’ve done that here, too. Steve Zissou’s universe feels like it’s a baby step off skew with our own — the colors just a tad flat, … more…
best writing and direction of 2004: cut and print…
BEST DIRECTOR Lars von Trier, Dogville Ever a risktaker, Lars von Trier took one of the biggest risks onscreen in 2004 with a determinedly uncinematic film that was also unabashedly political — a breathtaking and refreshingly daring combination in an era of play-it-safe “entertainment.” Setting his cast and his scene on a bare, black-box stage, … more…
best performances of 2004: ready for their closeup…
BEST ACTOR Don Cheadle, Hotel Rwanda It’s a role that, in the hands of even another very competent actor, could have descended into pathos and sentimentality, but Cheadle’s performance goes way beyond mere competence: As an Oskar Schindler-type figure in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, he approaches incomprehensible horrors in a way that makes us intimate partners … more…
best and worst movies of 2004 (and why I’m gonna spend a lot of money on DVDs)
Damn, but I had a good time at the movies this year. I sat through a lot of cinematic toxic waste, it’s true, but I also had a tough time winnowing down my best-of list to only ten films: the top 25 or 30 films in my annual ranking delighted me, made me laugh, moved … more…
