I enjoy vampire stuff, but it’s ironic that the teen romance elements drawing so many fans to the Twilight “saga” is the thing that turns me off the series (I guess it’s not that ironic, since I’m not a tween girl). After watching New Moon, I wasn’t eager to catch up with the human-vampire-werewolf love…
Category: (4 out of 5)
Movie #1: Shutter Island
A lot of movies catch my eye, but with all the mediocre reviews and bad word-of-mouth these days, I don’t end up seeing a lot of them in the theatre. However, they do make it on to my mental list for some future date to screen at home from the comfort of my living room….
Splice – Movie Review
I wonder what Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein would have been like if rewritten as a modern-day bio-sci-fi horror movie. Would Frankenstein fear the monster? adopt the monster? teach it to spell? dress it up? have sex with it? Splice is only a thematic descendant of that Victorian gothic novel, but I guess the issue of science…
Alice in Wonderland – Movie Review
Tim Burton should do more adaptations. Most fans probably prefer his quirkier, original movies like Edward Scissorhands or Ed Wood, but I am fond of his fantasy adaptations such as Sleepy Hollow and now Alice in Wonderland. Director Burton has really expanded the Wonderland universe into an even more spectacular place than it had been…
Oscar, Schmoscar 2010
I’m pretty excited about this year’s Oscars. That’s not because I finally care who wins (there are probably so many factors besides merit which determine that), but more because I’m enjoying watching a lot of the nominated films. Here are some capsule reviews of movies that I’ve discovered as part of cramming for the Oscars….
Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief – Movie Review
There is a litany of similarities between Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, and the first Harry Potter film that goes way beyond their shared director, Chris Columbus. Like Harry, Percy Jackson’s life is turned upside-down when he learns of his special background and destiny. He realizes that things around him aren’t as…
Sherlock Holmes – Movie Review
I have to admit that I’m a bit Downey’d out. When I found out that the role of the latest incarnation of the British super-sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, was going to Robert Downey Jr., I was less than excited. It’s not that he’s not an excellent actor, or that his movies are not enjoyable, but the…
The Princess and the Frog – Movie Review
I might have felt slighted that Disney’s first 2D animated movie in a while was so derivative if it did not successfully remind me of the things I’d been missing from Disney animation for so long. Unlike the recent hit Enchanted, which up-ended the conventions of the Disney fairy tale movie and squeezed it into…
Zombieland – Movie Review
Zombieland is hardly a zombie movie. Sure, there are throngs of the undead (a zombie-making virus struck down the entire planet — take that, H1N1!) who are happy to disembowel people for fun and snacking; but they don’t appear for large chunks of the movie. This is more of a post-apocalyptic, survival, road movie mash-up….
