Jul 28: Bullitt (Yates, 1968)
Jul 26: Carriers (Pastor/Pastor, 2009)
Jul 24: Inception (Nolan, 2010)
Jul 11: She's Out of My League (Smith, 2010)
Jul 10: Five Easy Pieces (Rafelson, 1970)
Jul 8: Pandora's Box (Pabst, 1929)
Jun 23: The Ghost Writer (Polanski, 2010)
Jun 13: Point Blank (Boorman, 1967)
Jun 6: Greenberg (Baumbach, 2010)
Jun 2: The Wolfman (Johnston, 2010)
May 28: Kick-Ass (Vaughn, 2010)
May 27: 25th Hour (Lee, 2002)
May 26: From Paris With Love (Morel, 2010)
May 25: The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock, 1938)
May 21: Shutter Island (Scorcese, 2010
May 16: The Lathe of Heaven (Loxton/Barzyk, 1980)
May 12: Night of the Eagle (Hayers, 1962)
May 6: Real Genius (Coolidge, 1985)
May 5: The Hammer (Herman-Wurmfeld, 2008)
May 3: Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (Nelson, 2006)
May 3: Gentlemen Broncos (Hess, 2009)
May 1: Repo Men (Sapochnik, 2010)
Apr 30: 2012 (Emmerich, 2009)
Apr 30: Body Heat (Kasdan,1981)
Apr 30: Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (Carax, 1991)
Apr 29: Dogville (Von Trier, 2003)
Apr 23: The Crazies (Eisner, 2010)
Apr 20: Legion (Stewart, 2010)
Apr 18: Big Trouble in Little China (Carpenter, 1986)
Apr 17: The White Ribbon (Haneke, 2009)
Apr 14: Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein, 1925)
Apr 13: Killshot (Madden, 2009)
Apr 12: Blow-Up (Antonioni, 1966)
Apr 11: The World of Apu (Ray, 1959)
Apr 10: Visioneers (Drake, 2009)
Apr 9: Sleep Dealer (Rivera, 2009)
Apr 4: The Book of Eli (Hughes/Hughes, 2010)
Mar 29: Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Fassbinder, 1974)
Mar 28: The Slammin' Salmon (Heffernan, 2009)
Mar 27: Gomorra (Garrone, 2008)
Mar 27: Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths (Liu/Montgomery, 2009)
Mar 22: The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising (Cunningham, 2007)
Mar 21: Linda Linda Linda (Yamashita, 2006)
Mar 20: Sherlock Holmes (Ritchie, 2009)
Mar 13: Passengers (Garcia, 2008)
Mar 13: The Fantastic Mr. Fox (Anderson, 2009)
Mar 11: Layer Cake (Vaughn, 2004)
Mar 4: Un Prophète (Audiard, 2009)
Mar 3: Anvil! The Story of Anvil (Gervasi, 2009)
Mar 2: House of the Devil (West, 2009)
Feb 27: A Single Man (Ford, 2009)
Feb 27: The Last Station (Hoffman, 2009)
Feb 25: Daybreakers (Spierig/Spierig, 2010)
Feb 24: Antichrist (Von Trier, 2009)
Feb 24: Nine (Marshall, 2009)
Feb 21: Thirst (Park, 2009)
Jan 25: The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Herzog, 2009)
Jan 22: Avatar (Cameron, 2009)
Jan 19: The Lovely Bones (Jackson, 2009)
Jan 18: The Road (Hillcoat, 2009)
Jan 17: An Education (Scherfig, 2009)
Jan 17: The Men Who Stare at Goats (Heslov, 2009)
Jan 15: Up In the Air (Reitman, 2009)
Jan 14: A Serious Man (Coen/Coen, 2009)
Jan 13: Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel (Carrivick, 2010)
Jan 11: Armored (Antal 2009)
Jan 3: The House Bunny (Wolf, 2008)
Jan 1: Give 'Em Hell, Malone (Mulcahy, 2010)
Dec 29: The Limits of Control (Jarmusch, 2009)
Dec 28: Revengers Tragedy (Cox, 2002)
Dec 28: Inland Empire (Lynch, 2006)
Dec 27: Whip It (Barrymore, 2009)
Dec 26: Public Enemies (Mann, 2009)
Dec 26: The Invention of Lying (Gervais/Robinson, 2009)
Dec 24: Elves (Mandel, 1989)
Dec 24: Fitzwilly (Mann, 1967)
Dec 23: Pandorum (Alvart, 2009)
Dec 22: A Perfect Getaway (Twohy, 2009)
Dec 17: Terminator Salvation (McG, 2009)
Dec 16: Messages Deleted (Cohen, 2009)
Dec 15: Valkyrie (Singer, 2008)
Dec 13: The New World (Malick, 2005)
Dec 11: Gamer (Neveldine/Taylor, 2009)
Dec 7: Zombieland (Fleischer, 2008)
Dec 5: Les Carabiniers (Godard, 1963)
Dec 3: The Informant! (Soderbergh, 2009)
Dec 2: Ratcatcher (Ramsay, 1999)
Nov 28: Twilight (Hardwicke, 2008)
Nov 23: Sparrow (To, 2008)
Nov 21: Sugar (Boden/Fleck, 2009)
Nov 19: Mysterious Skin (Araki, 2005)
Nov 18: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (Sommers, 2009)
Nov 14: Surrogates (Mostow, 2009)
Nov 13: Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino, 2009)
Nov 11: The Boat That Rocked (Curtis, 2009)
Nov 8: Liquid Sky (Tsukerman, 1983)
Nov 7: Southland Tales (Kelly, 2007)
Nov 7: eXistenZ (Cronenberg, 1999)
Nov 5: (500) Days of Summer (Webb, 2009)
Oct 31: Undead (Spierig/Spierig, 2003)
Oct 31: The Keep (Mann, 1983)
Oct 31: My Best Friend Is a Vampire (Huston, 1987)
Oct 31: Trick 'r Treat (Dougherty, 2009)
Oct 30: Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)
Oct 30: Halloween II (Rosenthal, 1981)
Oct 29: The Carrier (White, 1988)
Oct 28: The Stone Tape (Sasdy, 1972)
Oct 27: Lifeforce (Hooper, 1985)
Oct 27: Peeping Tom (Powell, 1960)
Oct 25: Pontypool (McDonald, 2009)
Oct 23: Paranormal Activity (Peli, 2009)
Oct 22: Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (Harvey, 2004)
Oct 20: Cthulhu (Gildark, 2008)
Oct 19: I Walked with a Zombie (Tourneur, 1943)
Oct 18: Poltergeist II: The Other Side (Gibson, 1986)
Oct 18: Moon (Jones, 2009)
Oct 17: I Sell the Dead (McQuaid, 2009)
Oct 15: The Reaping (Hopkins, 2007)
Oct 14: Dust Devil (Stanley, 1992)
Oct 13: Pontypool (McDonald, 2009)
Oct 11: Poltergeist (Hooper, 1982)
Oct 11: The Exorcism of Emily Rose (Derrickson, 2005)
Oct 11: Extract (Judge, 2009)
Oct 10: Orphan (Collet-Serra, 2009)
Oct 9: The Watcher in the Woods (Hough, 1980)
Oct 8: Dr. Giggles (Coto, 1992)
Oct 5: Candyman (Rose, 1992)
Oct 4: Dressed to Kill (De Palma, 1980)
Oct 4: Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)
Oct 4: Mirrors (Aja, 2008)
Oct 4: The Hurt Locker (Bigelow, 2009)
Oct 3: La Habitacion del Nino (De La Iglesia, 2006)
Oct 1: The Broken (Ellis, 2008)
Sep 29: Crank: High Voltage (Neveldine/Taylor, 2009)
Sep 28: Duplicity (Gilroy, 2009)
Sep 27: Event 16 (Pearson, 2006)
Sep 26: Mr. Freedom (Klein, 1969)
Sep 26: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (Scorsese, 1974)
Sep 13: A Perfect Getaway (Twohy, 2009)
Sep 12: X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Hood, 2009)
Aug 22: Whatever Works (Allen, 2009)
Aug 20: District 9 (Blomkamp, 2009)
Aug 17: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (Richter, 1984)
Aug 16: The Hangover (Phillips, 2009)
Aug 5: 17 Again (Steers, 2009)
Aug 3: Tetro (Coppola, 2009)
Aug 2: Drag Me to Hell (Raimi, 2009)
Aug 1: Goodfellas (Scorsese, 1990)
Jul 26: The Brothers Bloom (Johnson, 2009)
Jul 13: Mulberry Street (Mickle, 2007)
Jul 12: Martyrs (Laugier, 2008)
Jul 12: Calvaire (Du Welz, 2004)
Jul 12: Hostel: Part II (Roth, 2007)
Jul 12: The Grudge 2 (Shimizu, 2006)
Jul 7: Henry Poole is Here (Pellington, 2008)
Jul 6: Push (McGuigan, 2009)
Jul 6: Redbelt (Mamet, 2008)
Jul 6: Max Payne (Moore, 2008)
Jul 4: Bringing Out the Dead (Scorsese, 1999)
Dec 3: Cops (Keaton/Cline, 1922)

I realize, after watching this, that I have a special mental category for Gilliam, Del Toro, and Burton. All three of them, I get the sense that I understand what sort of movie it is they are trying to make, and I want to see that movie so I’ll see pretty much anything they do, but I don’t think any of them have quite reached their Platonic ideal. I think Gilliam has actually come the closest of the three (with Time Bandits), but Imaginarium is probably the most Gilliam-y thing I’ve seen from him in quite a while (particularly that scene with the policeman’s chorus line).

The whole thing’s kind of a mess, and I’m not sure losing Ledger mid-shoot is really to blame (the swapping out of other actors in the CGI-scenes seemed more natural than I would have guessed). The CGI is certainly part of the problem. Cheap CGI looks a lot less personal and compelling that cheap model work, and I’m not sure it’s really a great match for Gilliam’s aesthetic. Even setting that aside, there’s the issue that I’m not entirely sure what this movie was about. Parnassus won a series of bets with the devil based on people choosing imagination over something? In most of the scenes where people were choosing one thing over another, I couldn’t figure out which choice represented which side. Maybe I shouldn’t really complain about a movie not ploddingly explaining every little detail, but there was a bit of a clarity issue here. On the other hand, it did give the whole film I kind of fuzzy quality that kind of worked, so maybe it was entirely deliberate.

I don’t really know where to begin with this one. I am willing to accept that there are, in fact, people living with similar sorts of circumstances, but there’s something about presenting lower class African-American life as being so violent, amoral, etc. I mean, I am not black, so perhaps I have nothing to stand on here, but most of this movie could pretty much be presented as Aryan Nation propaganda without alteration. Someone who already harbors significant racial biases could watch this film and find total confirmation, but I guess it doesn’t make any sense to make a film with that sort of person in mind. And then there’s the whole issue of whether filmmakers have any responsibility for the moral and social content of their films. It just seems like a movie like this isn’t going to do much to help the perception of African-Americans by non-African-Americans, and, like I said, maybe that’s not the job of a movie, but it’s kind of hard to set aside the self-importance and Oprah/Tyler Perry-promotion of the film as an “important work” and wonder whether it’s something that really ought to be getting presented with the kind of cultural importance the film has been granted.

Also, and not to get hung up on this sort of thing, but is it not a little odd that the darker skinned characters are portrayed as, basically, subhuman and need to be saved by lighter skinned women? It’s not quite a “Thank you Mr. White Man” kind of movie, but there’s something about the casting that made me question what the director was thinking.

Gran Torino kind of made me feel like I’d written off Eastwood as a director in recent years, but I’m pretty sure this undid all of the work that one did. It’s a profoundly boring movie, the arc of which is most defined by the description “How Nelson Mandela Became a Rugby Fan.” Damon’s performance is the least interesting thing I’ve seen from him, though his South African accent is decent. Better than Freeman’s, at any rate, which comes and goes throughout the film. Zacharek’s got an interesting enough piece on Freeman’s performance that almost makes me appreciate it, but I still feel like he was mostly sleepwalking through this movie. I’m not sure it’s entirely his fault. I was barely awake watching it, so I can’t imagine it was better to work through.

I understand that it’s a lot of work to expand a short picture book into a feature length film, but there’s something about the pop psych interpretation that just felt a little off. I know it’s not entirely fair that I am so fond of Return to Oz, which has the same blatant “this fantasy world is all an allegory for our protagonist’s problems back home,” but something about having Max become the parental figure seemed weird.

Actually, the more I think about it, what kind of message is that? Kids should put themselves in their parents’ position? I know that viewing the world from someone else’s point of view is part of growing up, but it seems a little dismissive of some valid issues children have. Max is entirely within his rights to feel anxiety about his mother not paying attention to him or to be upset that his sister didn’t care that his friends hurt him.

I must say, though, while I was able to spend most of the film complaining to myself about this sort of thing, I’d be lying if I said the bit at the end where they all start howling to each didn’t get me pretty hard.

I wasn’t aware until the film was over that this was a spin-off of a TV series, but, looking back, it kind of makes sense. There is sort of an expected familiarity with the Malcolm Tucker character (and, especially, with his henchman) that was a little odd for those of us not familiar with the series. It didn’t really detract from my enjoyment of the film. The film is perhaps a little hamstrung by the premise being heavily inspired by the rush to war in Iraq, but determined to be non-specific. Everything feels a little more vague than it really should. I understand they don’t really want to be hemmed in by historical facts and don’t want to feel dated, but it kind of makes the film feel rootless instead of timeless.

I’m going to have to address this movie in a couple distinct chunks, mostly because I have to deal with the opening ten to fifteen minutes separately from the rest of the film. It’s a moving segment, but it sort of seems like a low blow to open your film with a “you will find the love of your life, then she will die leaving you old and alone.” I mean, it’s certainly effective, but it seems a little unearned to basically do that in the credit sequence.

It’s especially odd since the film then turns to light hearted adventure and pairing-of-opposites comedy. It’s hard to shake off the air of melancholy from the credits, which I guess is sort of the point, but it sort of clangs a bit with the hyperactive young boy. It’s like being hassled at a funeral by a cheery youngster.

Again, I guess that’s sort of the point. We’re supposed to allow the excitement of youth keep us out of despair and loneliness, but it doesn’t seem like there’s really much of a mourning period (for the audience, at least. I couldn’t tell how much time had passed between the credits and the first proper scene of the movie). Anyway, were it not for the sense of melancholy and resentment from unearned heartstring-pulling, the remainder of the movie would have been pretty enjoyable. I have a low tolerance for the freneticness of modern animated films, but this didn’t grate too badly.

I’m fairly torn on this one. The attempts at verisimilitude end up being more annoying than anything else – pretty much every scene with the “real” Dr. Tyler are pretty unpleasant to watch (though there are scenes in the “fake” movie that are as poorly acted – Will Patton, in particular, seems like he’s wandered in from a much worse movie). On the other hand, the actual abduction storyline is more interesting than I would have guessed. I found the dialogue about owls who aren’t owls effective at conveying a particular kind of dream logic that ended up being actually creepy. The tie-in between aliens and angry Sumerian deities was interesting, if not entirely fully explained (though, really, that’s for the best – you don’t want your angry alien gods to be overly explanatory). I particularly liked the “actual video” footage of abductees being “possessed.” Distended mouths are on my short list of things that I reliably find creepy in movies, so I found that one particularly nice.

Still, there’s a lot I didn’t like here. The half-hearted attempt to introduce a level of doubt in the narrator seemed both ill-timed and hard to pull off in a movie where we’re presented with visual evidence (outside of the re-enactment framework) that supports her version of events. The fact that we were (apparently) supposed to be shocked to learn that she’s in a wheelchair was just confusing.

I really wanted to like this one, if only because I admire the chutzpah of Scorsese making an epic musical, but I just couldn’t get past the relentlessly unsympathetic protagonists. I’m not saying that filmmakers need to make their characters come across as people a viewer might want to be friends with, but they should at least be interesting. The arguments between Jimmy and Francine get endlessly repetitive, so, by the third or fourth screaming match, it just gets painfully dull. The final musical number is impressive but in more of a “Liza Minnelli is terrifying” way instead of an “empowered woman” sort of way.

One of my biggest problems with Liam Neeson is that I watched Darkman way too often as an impressionable teenager, so it’s virtually impossible for me to watch him in any sort of serious role without picturing him screaming “Take the fucking elephant!” at people. He doesn’t really get a lot of work where that sort of behavior seems in character, so I was very pleased to watch him go to town as a remorseless revenge machine here. I read Charlie Huston’s Hank Thompson books a while back and have been discussing them with my dad, and I think Bryan here is on roughly the same moral footing as Hank; there is virtually no act repellent enough to stand between him and his goal.

I wonder if this is perhaps a better projection fantasy. The viewer may not have the particular training to become a secret agent, but she can always imagine that she possesses the will to pull the trigger without hesitation that sets someone like Bryan apart.

I think this film suffers a fair bit from the later reputation of the Broken Lizard troupe. If it’s possible to judge the film on its own (nearly impossible to do, given the packaging), it’s actually a fairly well-done (if very low budget) sweet little independent romantic comedy. I can certainly see how it would have done well at festivals, but, had I seen it at the time, I would have been stunned to see the same guys come up with Super Troopers. Overall, the filmmaking is kind of rough, and it gets a little slow at times, but I still liked it, even if it bears very little resemblance to the rest of their work.