Archive for Movies
January 5, 2006 at 11:08 pm · Filed under Movies
2005 wasn’t a fantastic year for movies (although I haven’t seen a lot of the late heavyweights yet), but this is a gem. Danny Trainspotting Boyle has made his sweetest film, about a Northern English kid who find a bag full of money from a train heist, and who speaks regularly with saints — Clare and Francis of Assisi, for two. There’s a nice homage to Shallow Grave (lots of hiding in attics with a whole bunch o’ money), but the scary factor is amped way down. I’m putting this at the top of the family-friendly best of 2005.
Oh dear, I’ve just checked in with the ol’ IMDb, and this is technically a 2004 release, since they showed it at the Toronto Film Festival in a particular even-numbered year.
January 2, 2006 at 8:26 pm · Filed under Movies
A cute little short on the TCM. A newspaper editor decides “Frost Warning!” is a more important headline for his readership than the gangster that was gunned down in front of him. His assistant: a geeky 28-year-old named Jimmy Stewart, in one of his first roles.
Anyway, it’s great to have priorities.
January 2, 2006 at 4:38 am · Filed under Movies
This is an important talkie, I think. Edward G. Robinson (was there another Edward Robinson that made G. become the Daniel J. Travanti of his day?) rises from Rico the street hood to the top of the crime food chain, and then back down he goes. It anticipates by a few years Paul Muni’s Scarface and all those Cagney movies like The Public Enemy and White Heat. I couldn’t really get into it, however. I did notice some pre-Hays Code insinuations about Rico’s non-hetero leanings, but other than that I feel like I’ve seen this movie a few times in a few better ways, even if this one came first.
Jessica noticed that what appeared to be ceilings in low-angled shots were actually just extensions of the backdrop painted trompe l’oeil. It was an interesting effect, apparently abandoned soon after this film, because you don’t see much in the way of movie set ceilings again, or even low-angle shots (due to the pesky intrusion of overhead lights and booms and the like), until Citizen Kane ten years later.
It’s a short movie at 80 minutes. There was barely time for any “pizza pizza” jokes from the peanut gallery.
March 16, 2005 at 1:37 am · Filed under Movies
I have begun my unholy mission to make Zombie Vs. Ninja one of the IMDB’s 100 worst movies of all time. How can you help? Watch it, then give it a 1! Then, buy it for me! I haven’t seen it yet!
Director: Godfrey Ho!
December 31, 2004 at 12:57 am · Filed under Movies
Jessica and I saw House of Flying Daggers tonight. The French make all kinds of passionate I-hate-you/I-love-you relationship movies that I like to call kiss-n-slaps (and that I see far too many of in proportion to my regard for them).
Zhang Yimou has made what may be the first kiss-n-stab. I loved the tweaked-’til-it-hurts color palette and the fight scenes are generally pretty good. The green-on-green-on-green ambush in the bamboo forest is spectacular. Like Zhang’s previous and much superior film Hero, there’s a hefty amount of artifice involved in the proceedings. Why, then, do I feel the need to complain about how contrived the love triangle is?
This might as well be actual dialog:
I love you, but I must kill you, but I hope you are not that dead, because really I love you. Oh, you are not quite dead yet? I might have to fight you some more. You’re more dead now? Why did you have to die?
Some nice action set pieces (that Zhang Ziyi is quite an action set piece herself) and art direction, but it’s all ruined by hoke. 6/10.
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