Category Archives: Movie

The moving picture industry has had a profound effect on me.

21 and The Forbidden Kingdom

21 An exciting based-on-a-true-story drama, we follow the life experience of an MIT student who needs 300,000 dollars to go to Harvard Med…so he counts cards in Vegas, gets emotional and pisses off his mentor, gets cheated and gets revenge and gets cheated again. Lots of fun and lots of good jokes plus an important life lesson: if you get lots of money, DON’T HIDE IT IN THE CEILING OF YOUR DORM ROOM! 😉 The Forbidden Kingdom This film freaking rules! Well first off – the opening is ok up to the point where the gang banger starts beating up on Michael Angarano for hanging out with “those chinks in yellow town”…first off I didn’t know south Boston was so racist and second I didn’t know gang bangers took karate. My big issue with the opening was that is was SOOOOOO 90’s: kid is introduced; kid gets challenged or beat-up; … Continue reading →

The Searchers

The Searchers Mose (Hank Worden) was in Davy Crockett and the River Pirates. “Smokin’ up a new batch Mason?” Lorrie’s father (Mr. Jorgensen – John Qualen) was in Casablanca. He’s in the resistance and contacts Victor Laszlo in Cafe American. “My name is Berger”. WTF is up with John Wayne? His character flips 180 degrees at the end of the movie. So does Natalie Wood’s character! I mean sure you can try and explain it with character choices, but it’s still very awkward at first blush. According to the commentary, the book has a much darker ending which they couldn’t use in the movie….but it makes things somewhat awkward….. But it’s still really funny, ya chunkhead. Is The Missing (2003) an updated version of this story? It’s based on a book after all… How odd! Both movies seem similar at first glance and they’re both based on books, but they’re … Continue reading →

Vantage Point

A very enjoyable political thriller. What I was most impressed with was the concept and their execution of it (forgive the pun). Revolving around a terrorist attack on the US President in Spain, the story is patched together from (roughly) 6 different perspectives, shown one at a time with rewind montages at the end of each until we tie everything together at the end. They did a really good job taking care of continuity – although with anything of this magnitude, little bits and pieces will always slip by, but it’s very negligible in the long run. The main set piece they filmed in was an old square in Spain where the President is arriving to make a speech and is subsequently assassinated. What really incredible about this portion of the film is that it’s almost hard to imagine the number of cameras they had set up to tell the … Continue reading →

Jumper

Take the opening of X-Men 2 (where Nightcrawler attacks the White House) and expand it to a 2 hour movie and you have some notion of the glee I experienced watching this movie. And it was a decent story too! Really enjoyable background…and they don’t even explain the science of the jumpers! They also did a really good job casting…Hayden Christianson is the star of the show, but the movie starts 8 years before him and the kid they used (he was Seth in The Pacifier) looked A LOT like Hayden….the girl (Because of Winn-Dixie / AnnaSophia Robb when she’s young, Rachel Bilson older) didn’t look as close so I was a little disappointed, but whatever. 57 stunt players. Filmed mostly on location (which is pretty awe inspiring considering they teleported from Egypt to Bali to Rome without thinking twice about it) except for Mexico standing in for Egypt (guessing) … Continue reading →

August Rush

Oliver Twist with a dash of Beethoven. This movie is incredibly sweet – a love story about music and the connections we make to people and the universe through it. Freddie Highmore is absolutely brilliant! Although with his recent success, I reflect briefly on the problems that child actors find in their futures: Bobby Driscoll (child Disney star/voice of Peter Pan overdosed on drugs), Macaulay Culkin seems to have adjusted but what has he done since Saved!, and where is Haley Joel Osmont? The music is absolutely gorgeous…brilliant combinations of classical and rock inflections. AND! Keri Russel (mother), Jonathon Rhys Mayer (father) and Freddie Highmore (prodigal son) all play their own instruments (the credits list their tutors and they are credited on the soundtrack). It makes me so happy to see a movie that is so much about the music is organically created/represented by the actors…(clarification – the tutors taught … Continue reading →

Atonement

Wonderfully, powerful, enjoyable romantic drama about a couple torn about by the lie of the younger sister who struggles with her sin for the rest of her life. Set in the mid-late 1930’s in England, the film stars a plethora of talented actors and actresses from previous Focus Feature films as well as Kiera Knightley and James McAvoy as the young couple. Cecilia (Knightly) is the daughter of a wealthy woman and Robbie (McAvoy) is the hired hand’s son who went to Cambridge with her, where she avoided him because of his stature. But one night, they can avoid each other no longer, and are caught in an awkward position in the library by Cecilia’s younger sister Briony. When a ghastly crime is committed, young Briony (as children do) latches on to the idea that Robbie did it, leading to Robbie’s arrest and later conscription into World War 2, his … Continue reading →

Blue Man Group How To Be A Megastar Tour 2.1, The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything

So I drove up to the Honda Center (or as I call it, the Honda Ponda) to see the Blue Man Group tour, but as I got there, I realized I didn’t have ANY cash on me (which you need to park your car). So I spent 15 minutes struggling to remember my PIN # at an ATM before deciding to just drive down Katella to the Stadium Promenade (where the Century Theatres are) rather than search for a Bank of the West where my PIN # MIGHT come to me. The thing about the Promenade is that it explicitly states that you’re not supposed to park their for events (like Angel Stadium or the Honda Center. So I park in the back, walk up to the ticket booth and purchase a ticket to the movie with the latest starting time, then deceivingly walk past the restaurants (so the security … Continue reading →

National Treasure: Book of Secrets

This was a decent film. An enjoyable sequel that was at least as enjoyable as the original. I want to say I enjoyed it more (in comparison to the original) than Be Cool (in comparison to Get Shorty) even though as I look at it they’re basically the same movie with different dialogue/situations. Maybe I just enjoy the premise of National Treasure more than Get Shorty/Be Cool. It’s a really fun adventure in the same vein as Indiana Jones with an American history twist. You don’t need to see the first movie to really enjoy this movie, but it might make things a little easier for you to understand minor quirks in the script. The opening sequence to the movie is awesome because they get the details of the Lincoln assassination perfect. Any time history is treated respectfully/correctly, I love it! Nicholas Cage looked really tan, like he had a … Continue reading →

[random] Welcome To The New Year! [/random]

Saving Private Ryan Sat down and watched it in it’s entirety for the first time in like 5 years and there are several people in the film that I now recognize which is very exciting! Paul Giamatti – “I got ankles like an old f*cking lady” Ted Danson – Captain Hamill (kills all the Germans when Paul Giamatti knocks the timber through their wall) Nathan Fillion – The Fake Private Ryan (“My brothers are dead?!?! But they’re only in grammar school!”). Colby from Numb3rs – 3rd from the 506 Family Guy Star Wars Rush Limbaugh Reference Get the Flash Player to see this player. Quagmire/C3PO: Hey, mind if I turn on the radio? Announcer: WTAT – Tattoine’s All Talk Radio. Rush: My good friends, the liberal galactic media is at it again. They never stop! Now they’re trying to convince us that Hoth is melting! Well that’s crazy…just trying to … Continue reading →