Planet 51 (review)

Much of what might have made it appealing to true devotees of science fiction and cinema, like how it’s a pastiche of 1950s B-movies, is lost when its parodying of the paranoia and xenophobia of those films is so relentlessly trite and obvious…

9 (review)

Imagine if Jules Verne wrote a movie for Pixar, if that steampunk visionary looked forward from his perch in the late Victorian age to a Great War in his near future that didn’t pause for twenty years to let everyone to catch their breath but instead went apocalyptic.

U.K. box office: top 10 moneymakers of 2008

The final figures for 2008 are finally available, so here’s a quick look of the top movies of 2008, from a box-office perspective, in the U.K.: 1. Mamma Mia!: £69.17 million 2. Quantum of Solace: £51.02 million 3. The Dark Knight: £48.69 million 4. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: £40.27 million … more…

trailer break: ‘9’

Take a break from work: watch a movie trailer… Finally! Someone has animated the apocalypse! Well, Wall-E came close, but that was more an abandonment than an apocalypse. Here it looks like we’ve got the real thing: the world is trashed (is that Notre Dame on fire in the middle of the trailer? aww, no…), … more…

totally quotable! 2008

Here are the most quotable movie lines of the year 2008. I didn’t mean to hold these till the movie year was over — it just sort of happened that way. I’ll return to posting quotes as I hear them for 2009. No ranking — quotes are posted in reverse order of movie release dates, … more…

Online Film Critics Society 2008 awards

The Online Film Critics Society, of which I am a member, has named its awards for 2008. The winners: PICTURE: Wall-E DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight ACTOR: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler ACTRESS: Michelle Williams, Wendy and Lucy SUPPORTING ACTOR: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Wall-E, Andrew … more…

North American box office: top 10 moneymakers of 2008

Just for fun, here’s a quick look of the top movies of 2008, from a box-office perspective: 1. The Dark Knight: $531,001,578 2. Iron Man: $318,313,199 3. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: $317,023,851 4. Hancock: $227,946,274 5. Wall-E: $223,806,889 6. Kung Fu Panda: $215,434,591 7. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa: $177,016,810 8. … more…