It’s great to see that (7 years after the two studios joined) Brave brings together the computer-generated artistry of Pixar with the fairytale storytelling of Disney. While it’s the first Pixar movie with a strong female lead, Disney has been producing “princess” tales for years. The story of young Merida, princess to the Scottish kingdom…
Category: Movies
Movie #2: Attack The Block
Were you a fan of 80s “creature features”? Y’know, B-movie horrors like Gremlins, Ghoulies, CHUD, Arachnophobia or even more serious ones like Alien? Well, this movie is a great throwback to those kinds of scary, fun flics. It all takes place on a single night in a south London housing project nicknamed “The Block”. As…
50 Movies, 1 Summer — Movie #1: Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1
Well, I’ve been lax in my movie watching again. Either I just haven’t gotten out to the movies enough or I’ve been kept away by too many mediocre reviews, but I have built up a huge backlog in my movie watch list. So, I figure that I’ll try again (like I did two summers ago)…
Prometheus – Movie Review
Prometheus raises a lot of questions, starting with whether or not this is really a prequel to the Alien trilogy. Let’s call it a loose prequel because there are no direct connections between this movie and the Alien movies. There are definitely a lot of echoes (prechoes?), including the self-serving super-corporation, untrustworthy androids, deadly creatures…
Snow White and the Huntsman – Movie Review
I don’t know about “fairest”, but this Snow White was by far the dullest and most disappointing movie I’ve seen all year. It may be difficult to give a new spin to a classic story that everyone already knows, but it’s not enough to simply throw familiar actors, fancy costumes and special effects at it…
The Avengers – Movie Review
When I heard that Marvel Entertainment was planning to do individual superhero movies that would culminate in The Avengers bringing all the characters and cast together in a superhero team movie, it seemed ambitious to say the least. Thank goodness they got a capable director like Joss Whedon, who’s also a genre/comic book fan himself….
Mirror, Mirror – Movie Review
Since Disney has long cornered the market on fairy tale adaptations, it’s actually hard to know what to expect from one that isn’t full of singing birds and pixie dust. After watching director Tarsem Singh take on Greek mythology with The Immortals, I was willing to bet that his adaptation of the Snow White story…
The Hunger Games – Movie Review
Happy Hunger Games! In adapting a book to screen, living up to the expectations of readers about how the characters look and act is not the only challenge. If you can make viewers tear up when a scene is moving, or jump when a scene is surprising even though they already know what’s coming, that’s…
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen – Movie Review
In Lasse Hallstrom movies (like Chocolat, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, and now Salmon Fishing in the Yemen), special individuals originally thought of by normal society as outsiders eventually draw the so-called “normal” people in and help them bring imagination, passion, and joy to their staid lives. In this movie, it’s a super-wealthy Yemeni Sheikh Muhammed,…
Alvin's Adventures in Pop Culture 