I can’t believe that people on the internet found Under The Mountain imaginative and fresh. It was a lame fantasy/horror adventure for tweens is what it was. Generally, I go for those kinds of Harry Potter, Golden Compass, even Lemony Snickett kind of movies, but this one was beyond-blah. Essentially, after the death of their…
Category: 50 Movies 1 Summer
Movie #39: Elizabeth: The Golden Age
After The Other Boleyn Girl, I figured that I’d treat myself to a Tudor double-bill by watching Elizabeth: The Golden Age, the 2007 quasi-sequel to 1998’s Elizabeth. Both films feature Cate Blanchett in amazing performances as England’s “virgin queen” (and daughter, of course, of Anne Boleyn). While the first one was mostly about Elizabeth becoming…
Movie #38: The Other Boleyn Girl
I forgot how much I like period dramas. I used to enjoy the sumptuous costumes, the ornate dialogue, the spectacular buildings, and the historical intrigue of movies like The Other Boleyn Girl all the time. I guess they’ve fallen out of fashion since their heyday in the 80s and 90s when Merchant-Ivory productions (like A…
Movie #37: The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
One of the reasons I didn’t rush to see The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is because the trailer made it seem like it was just going to be one long, tense conversation between a NYC subway dispatcher (played by Denzel Washington) and a psychotic hostage-taker (played by John Travolta). To me, a script…
Movie #36: Valentine’s Day
OK, I have to stop claiming that I don’t watch romantic comedies because obviously that’s untrue. However, I can still say that don’t like them because if there are reasons for my liking Valentine’s Day, they have nothing to do with romance. The intersecting tales of a dozen or so characters who go through romantic…
Movie #35: Repo Men
I knew that Repo Men was going to be cut-rate sci-fi, so I didn’t watch it in the theatre. Set in future Toronto (at least it looks like Toronto, since it was filmed less than a block from where I live — Hey, the subway does not fly over Yonge-Dundas Square!) where everyone seems to…
Movie #34: Diary of a Wimpy Kid
The title says it all: Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a well-written movie (based on a series of illustrated books) about enduring the first year of middle school told from the perspective (complete with narrative voiceover) of a smallish, less-than-popular young middle-child boy named Greg. We all know how tough school can be at…
Movie #33: Paranormal Activity
Believing the hype about its scariness, I decided to watch Paranormal Activity in the daytime. I’d always figured that horror movies are barely scary without the creepy music, but I guess this one was designed to be frightening without the soundtrack. The entire film is staged as video camera footage taken by day-trader Micah Sloat…
Movie #32: Ponyo
One of the qualities you can find abundant in films by Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki is imagination, not just in story-telling, but visually as well. While Ponyo is clearly inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid”, it is still full of fresh wonder and enchantment. Sosuke is a 5-year-old boy living in a…
Alvin's Adventures in Pop Culture 