I really like the trend to bring books to the screen. I especially like it when they bring fantasy books to life because the technology has reached the point where they can really make magical elements look convincingly real. That hurdle out of the way, fantasy books (especially children and young adult fantasy) have so…
Category: Movies
Oscar, Schmoscar 2009
Last year’s Oscars are pretty dead to me. Even to this day I have not watched any of the big winners (I didn’t even do an “Oscar, Schmoscar” post in ’08). This year is a whole other story. I was excited about many of the movies before they even got nominated. I’ve already reviewed The…
The Reader – Movie Review
Kate Winslet stars as Hanna Schmitz, a woman who has an affair with a teenage boy in Germany. After a few summer months, she moves away and disappears from his life. Years later, that same young man, Michael Berg (played by newcomer David Koss), attends a trial as a law student and sees Hanna again….
Life Stories: Slumdog Millionaire & The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
When I was studying English Literature in university and reading story after story, I could not resist the temptation to see events in my own life as a narrative. You start to pick up on how one thing foreshadows another; how situations can seem to be symmetrical; how timing of events seem to happen for…
Valkyrie – Movie Review
All I wanted for Christmas was what Mr. Cruise promised. Of Valkyrie he said, “This isn’t a WW2 movie. This is a conspiracy thriller set in the War.” Like probably most of the audience, that was the hook that got me into the seat. Little did I know that based on the true story as…
2008: The Year On Screen
2008 Favourite Movies With the after-effects of the writers’ strike, and the resulting string of mediocre disappointments, 2008 was not a great year at the cinema. Hollywood continues to play it safe, even in the highly-imaginative realm of sci-fi, and we were bombarded mostly by sequels, remakes and adaptations. It was difficult to pick favourites…
The Day The Earth Stood Still – Movie Review
As I went in to see The Day The Earth Stood Still, a remake of a 1950s sci-fi classic, I was hoping that this was going to be more than a one-note environmental-message-movie with amped up special effects. The movie trailer didn’t give me much expectation of that, but I clung to my own manufactured…
Twilight – Movie Review
I may not be one of the teenaged devotees of the original vampire romance novel, but having finished the Twilight book days before watching the movie adaptation, I surprisingly have a lot of issues with the film. (Be forewarned Twilighters, if you feel that nothing Twilight-related can be bad, please put away your claws and…
Australia – Movie Review
When I think of director Baz Luhrmann’s previous work (such as Romeo + Juliet, or Moulin Rouge), words like “glittering” or “stylish” might come to mind, but not so much “saga” or “sweeping”. So going to see his take on the period epic had me expecting some surprises. While the outback cowboy romance that began…
