A really good monster can make for a good monster movie. However, it rarely ever makes for a great monster movie. Most of those are actually not really about the monster at all, but about how people react to the threat that the monster imposes. Think about the Romero zombie films. Are the zombies that […]

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Man, what a let down. I didn’t actually expect this movie to be great, since the reviews had been so mixed. But considering it was from the same people that gave us Spider-Man 2 I thought it would be, at the very least, good. And it wasn’t.
The main problem with Spider-Man 3 is that […]

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Immediately after seeing The Departed for the first time my impression of the film was very positive. I was not as engaged by the plot as I expected to be, but that was offset by the surprisingly well drawn an interesting characters. Not the best movie of the year, I thought, but a very good […]

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As you probably know, Letters from Iwo Jima tells the story of the battle for the Japanese island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese perspective. It’s the other movie in the Clint Eastwood directed Iwo Jima bilogy, the first one being Flag of our Fathers.
The film has many important characters but focuses most of […]

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The royal family is a weird and fascinating institution. So obviously anachronistic in a modern society and so obviously lacking any real power. And yet it behaves as if it still had power, and all kinds of ceremonies are followed to maintain an illusion of power, not only by the royals but also by important […]

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As I was watching Little Miss Sunshine I kept going back and forth between thinking it was a very good movie and thinking it was a mediocre one. I would see a scene that was both funny and insightful and be enchanted. But then there would come a clunky scene and I would reevaluate how […]

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The performance of Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin is at the center of The Last King of Scotland. He is not the lead character, but his presence is so strong it occupies our minds even when he is not in the scene. It’s this performance that gives the movie it’s meaning, it’s emotional resonance, […]

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The Pursuit Of Happyness tells a relatively simple story in a straightforward manner. And that is exactly why it works.
The aforementioned story is that of Chris Gardner, a smart man, married and with a son, who finds himself in a bad financial situation due to some ill advised business decisions. Gardner, looking to change […]

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I kind of wish Deja Vu didn’t have anything to do with time travel. Sure, before that particular element is introduced the movie is just a cop drama. But it is a cop drama with unusually good characters, dialogue, acting and directing. It isn’t ground breaking, but it works, it keeps you interested. The […]

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Writer Guillermo Arriaga and Director Alejandro González Iñárritu have a style. The three movies they have done together (Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel ) tell three or four distinct stories that intercept at some key points. They also tend to jump around in time and to tell the same situation from multiple […]

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