loaded question: what’s the best movie ever about magic?
Define magic however you like: could be supernatural magic, stage magic, or any other definition of the word you can defend.
Lord of the Rings The Return of the King
what would it take for a superhero movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture?
Here’s an idea: tell a story about a female superhero who has to fight not only bad guys but cultural assumptions. Cast Jennifer Lawrence.
question of the day: Is there any chance in Hades that ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2’ could get an Oscar nom for Best Picture?
I think it’s so remote a possibility as to be preposterous. And no, the Return of the King sweep is not an apt comparison.
question of the day: What is the single most powerful moment ever in cinematic history?
I might pick the end of The Usual Suspects. Or the “you’re getting on that plane” bit in Casablanca. Or… Well, there’s a lot of them, probably. It would be tough to pick a single one…
question of the day: Tim Burton’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ is a billion-dollar movie: why?
Today, Tim Burton’s baroque and pointless adaptation of Alice in Wonderland will cross the $1 billion mark in worldwide box office receipts, as The Hollywood Reporter noted the other day. It’s notable, too, as the first of the billionaire movies to have opened not in the summer season or at Christmastime but in spring. (The … more…
best and worst movies of 2003 (and good riddance to a lousy year)
It hasn’t been a great year for film — I’m not the first critic you’ve heard say this. I had some very powerful and very entertaining experiences at the movies this year, but not as many as in other years, and few of those experiences coincided with the films that Hollywood wants us to think … more…
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (review)
The words I keep coming back to, the ones that seem to fit this most astonishing of films best, are ‘terrible’ and ‘awful.’ The old-fashioned senses of the words are what I’m talking about: Peter Jackson has given us a grandly eloquent film that inspires more terror and more awe than anything I’ve seen in a long time. I can compare my reaction to it only with the moviegoing experiences of my childhood, when the hugeness, the all-encompassing-ness of movies in all ways — emotionally, viscerally, visually, aurally — first astounded me, when ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ and Darth Vader’s stormtroopers horrified me to such a degree that I can still feel it.
