Review

“I don't know. You have absolute power, remember?”
--Michael from E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

"Leslie Burke is right. Mind like yours wide open, you could create a whole new world.”
--Ms. Edmunds from Bridge To Terabithia

“This is all yours. You're the owner of this world.”
--Carol from Where The Wild Things Are

The recollection of childhood is the infinite atlas of our dreams. Our childhood memories are a form of storytelling within themselves. The flood of emotions that washed over me while watching Spike Jonze’s breathtaking adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s timeless Where The Wild Things Are is a testament to the true power of visual storytelling. The power of Sendak’s 1963 vision radiates with startling precision in 2009. The power of this kind of story comes from tradition-- the tradition of parents reading to their young children. My older brothers and I begged my Mom to read us Where The Wild Things Are every night for several years. Not only did I beg my Mom to read me that book, but also Goodnight Moon, The Fantastic Mr. Fox and countless Babar books. My childhood memories are seen through a suburban Seventies hazy filter with images from books and countless Black and White films. Cinematically, my memories look as though they were shot by Edward Lachman and Tim Orr. Classic storybooks with their rich illustrations serve as templates of not only my dreams, but also the prism through which I view my past. The images from Sendak’s masterpiece are still as wild and inviting as they were nearly thirty-six years ago when my Mom read it to me every night. The power of Spike Jonze’s film comes through within the first several minutes as we are introduced to the iconic, mischief maker himself, Max, beautifully played by Max Records. In these scenes, the chaos, allure and recollection of childhood is presented perfectly. The first twenty minutes of the film are a powerful expression of what it means to be a young boy through the eyes of Spike Jonze, screenwriter, Dave Eggers and most importantly, Maurice Sendak. Where The Wild Things Are is not a childhood flashback, but a reflection of what it means to be a child. This is not a children’s film, this is a film for all ages. Everyone can relate to the themes in this work; that is part of the film’s magnetism.  read more »

Remember kids, Inglourious Basterds is playing on a screen very near the one you might be considering seeing the, um, second Halloween II in. You’ll want to keep that in mind during the half dozen times you want to walk out of this tedious look-at-your-watch sequel of an original, um, remake that I actually liked.

While Brad Pitt and Co. were clobbering Nazis to the squeal of audience delight somewhere in a much happier section of the multiplex, myself and the 7 other people in the theater...made not a word. Complete silence. No kids making smartass comments or even wolf-whistles at the handful of topless women. No genius giving a running teleplay or unwanted commentary as the movie’s going on like he’s in his living room. No ewws or ohhs at the various shots of gore. Maybe the electronic beep of a watch changing hours was the closest thing that resembled an audience reaction.

At least no one walked out of the theater, but that could have been because they were either asleep or too drained from ennui to exert all that effort. During the movie, you hope that someone turns on their phone simply because the light blue glow emanating is showing something more interesting than what is on the screen. When the familiar Halloween theme blares over the end credits, you can be sure that remaining coherent audience members will look at each other blank-faced, probably wondering “What the fuck did we just watch?” Or maybe they’ll have no expression at all, they’ve just listened to a scintillating lecture on photosynthesis...which on the other hand might be more interesting that anything that happens during the movie.  read more »

Ever since making an ear-cutting splash in ’92 with Reservoir Dogs and spawning a flannel-wearing generation of film geeks with the iconic Pulp Fiction writer/director Quentin Tarantino remains the most vital filmmaker of his generation. Whether you love or hate his films, one has to admit that they rarely induce an indifferent reaction. With Inglourious Basterds Tarantino has made a Holocaust film that doesn’t feel like School on Saturday or make you think you have homework after the movie. If you thought Death Proof was too talky or that Jackie Brown wasn’t worth the 2.5 hour investment, then odds are you’re not going to enjoy Basterds and you’d be better off watching your District 9 download again or seeing massive drug buys, prostitution, car antenna abortions, and arms deals occur during screenings of Post Grad because of the 7 people in the theater, none of them are actually watching the movie. Call it the Keaton factor.

In Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino has fashioned revenge porn we can all relate to. We may not be able to identify with the oversized seafood being oppressed in J-Berg because they look a little different or give a flying fillet o’ fuck about whether some narcissistic New York shrew completes and blogs about all the Julia Child recipes, but I think we’ve all thought to ourselves not only about how Hitler was a monster, but in choosing to both shoot himself in the head and bite into a cyanide capsule rather than getting taken out of Berlin...turned out to be a huge pussy as well taking the easy way out.  read more »

Kyle XY

Grade: B+

“Kyle XY” is probably the best show ABC Family has ever had. It’s far more interesting than most of their shows and has compelling characters that are continually developed and become easier to care for as the series goes on. “Kyle XY” is an intriguing mix of mystery of a corrupted conspiracy and teen/family drama. This mix works really well alongside the comedy in the innocence of experiencing everything for the first time.

Kyle (Dallas), woke up one day with no memory of anything. He was labeled as an amnesia victim and handed over to psychiatrist, Nicole Tragger (MacIntyre). Since he has no other place to go, she brought him to her home. She felt for him deeply and wanted to help him. The rest of the Traggers end up embracing Kyle and making him part of their family. They always suspected there was something very different about him. He’s a genius with a photographic memory and unconceivable hearing abilities. There are many simple things about the world around him that he doesn’t know; he is taking new things in every day. Oh, and he doesn’t have a belly button. Josh, (Bilodeau), keeps a notebook of all of the abnormal things Kyle does and has a theory that Kyle is an alien. Kyle searches for answers about his past. He finally finds them when two people come to see him, claiming to be his parents. A blood test even proves this. Kyle goes with them only to find his real parent: Adam Baylin (Peck).  read more »

The Meryl Streep/Amy Adams dramedy Julie & Julia is the perfect piece of summer counterprogramming against the PG-13 tempered testosterone of G. I. Joe and a rising Cobra. That it’s a pretty decent movie can only help the running time go by faster. Guys, if having to watch this is part of your quid pro blow for watching Sienna Miller, Rachel Nichols and some really huge weaponry in Joe this weekend, you could do a lot worse than J & J as you could have been rendered sterile by The Time Traveler’s Wife next week. Consider the bullet swiftly dodged...

I did feel a well-earned sigh of relief when the closing credits began to roll and everyone began to file out of the theater. Before the movie started I realized that we (me, my wife, and a homeless person we treated to the movies) were the ONLY people under the age of 50 at the screening, and I was hoping, hoping, hoping that no one would die before the lights went up, and if they did at least be quiet about it but that rarely happens as someone unavoidably screams. Inconsiderate.
There’s nothing that breaks story continuity like sirens and gurneys and the inevitable almost-hour delay that occurs when someone dies while you’re watching something in the theater. It happened during a Screening of My Sister’s Keeper last June, but I realized that after seeing that awful maudlin ending and the grating soundtrack of the worst movie of the summer, (to paraphrase from The Hills Have Eyes) those that died were the lucky ones...  read more »

As the final big-budget release of Summer 2009, GI Joe: Rise of Cobra opens this weekend, one can be glad that Summer of ’09 wasn’t...Summer of ’08, ‘cause Dark Knight/Iron Man/Tropic Pineapple Thunder Express notwithstanding, why would you want to relive THAT again?

And, as far as unofficial Summer blockbuster finales go, Rise of Cobra is a very good one. Summer junk food at its inconsequential mindless best. It’s a more entertaining diversion than that half-baked Terminator, despite having Channing Tatum as one of its leads. That alone is praiseworthy as I hope appearing in Joe and its subsequent sequels will wash the reek of those Step Up movies off Tatum’s career. He seems like a nice enough...joe so he deserves a second shot. Now if he could only learn to act.

Along with Tatum, another beneficiary of the probable box-office success of G. I. Joe is Mummy and Joe director Stephen Sommers, whose last movie was the wearisome 2004 dud Van Helsing. ‘Nuff said, as Hugh Jackman can thank his back-to-back titan failures of Deception and Australia to knock Helsing off his personal worst of all time list.  read more »

6 movies down. 2 more to go. We can then move on with our lives...

After drawing the ire of millions of pointy-hatted, robe-wearing, wand-waving Potterphiles by pulling the antepenultimate Harry Potter movie from its original Thanksgiving release date (if you remember, Twilight and Australia opened during that weekend leaving a great majority of moviegoers over 12 and without training bras less than thankful), Harry Potter and Half-Blood Prince finally makes its way into theaters and judging by the trip-digit melanoma marinated lines around multiplexes, not a moment too soon.

I don’t consider myself a Potter expert, but like the majority of the free world I’ve helped line JK Rowling’s silky British pockets by reading the books (only finished the novels sometime last summer) and seeing the movies. I’m of the bent that the darker the series got, the better it became.

My least favorite of the movies are the first 2 Chris Columbus “kids” movies as they’re haltingly uneven and it doesn’t take very long for them to wear out their 2.5 hours + running time. Apparently the OD (Original Dumbledore) Richard Harris didn’t like them much either since he, you know, died and left the more than capable Michael Gambon holding the hat.  read more »

“All my life I wanted to be a bank robber. Carry a gun and wear a mask. Now that it's happened I guess I'm just about the best bank robber they ever had. And I sure am happy.”
-- John Dillinger from Dillinger (1973)

“I do what I do best, I take scores. You do what you do best, try to stop guys like me.”
-- Neil McCauley from Heat

“I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars... and you. What else you need to know?”
-- John Dillinger from Public Enemies

Memory is the most cruel and most deceitful bitch of all. Memory provides equal measures of rapturous ecstasy and crippling fear. Memory is the greatest double-edged sword for this moviegoer. I worship the filmmaker; I am willing to give him or her the benefit of the doubt, even when I know he has not earned it fully. If he hits one out of the stratosphere, a deluge of blissful emotion emanates endlessly from my heart. If he disappoints me, I feel betrayed. We sometimes feel the need to soften the blow by referring to the film as a glorious failure or an unrealized dream. In this way, we are letting them off the hook, but disappointment reigns and there is nothing glorious about that. The need to love or hate a film is a very strong desire. The fanatical feelings which accompany many films are many times more enjoyable than the actual viewing experience. Where is the middle ground? The battery of desire is working overtime in both directions. We want the extremes; very rarely do we want the middle, which can be as deep and profound as the two opposing factions. A great director can make a lesser film. The memory of his or her great films softens the disappointment, but the memory of the past infects the perception of the present film. It is the cinema junkie’s ultimate curse. In one sense we want more of the same, but we want something new at the same time. Tainted thrills may be the end result.  read more »

After you’ve seen Revenge of the Fallen more than a couple of times (gee...all those negative reviews drastically affected its opening weekend as NOBODY bothered to see it) and contemplate what kind of Higher power would force you to see John Turturro’s ass and not Megan Fox’s, you can shuck off the kids to Ice Age 3 (or just leave them at home) and check out Miami Vice creator Michael Mann’s new crime biopic Public Enemies.

But because it has Stephen Dorff in a decent supporting role (World Trade Center doesn’t count), not because he’s such a great actor or anything, but it shows that someone actually survived 2005’s atrocious Alone in the Dark intact and survived to make a movie that more than 12 people will see and remember with something other than rancor or sardonic laughter. Sorry to bring up Alone in the Dark while you’re eating dinner. Or maybe if you’re not eating dinner right now, I’m guessing you were planning to eat something today and I’ve just ruined your appetite.  read more »

Almost needless to say that most fans of Sasha Grey’s oeuvre will find her newest movie The Girlfriend Experience riddled with something I’m guessing not a lot of them are used to: actual dialogue. No, I’m not counting the words like “cock”, “cum” and “in my mouth” that you’re used to hearing in such fun family fare as Sasha Grey’s Anatomy, Black Cock Addiction 4 (such a cryptic title...I wonder what it’s about- I’m guessing it’s about something along the line of Requiem for a Dream, but instead of drugs it’s...black cocks) and Teenage Peach Fuzz 23

Sorry.

You may now have a moment or two to extricate your dominant hand from...wherever it was so you can now actually type with BOTH your hands. I realize that some of you may not used to having both hands free while watching or reading anything having to do with Sacramento native Sasha Grey (I live a couple of miles from Sac, which translates into about $67 in gas...down from $93 last summer)...but let’s try it for once, see how it fits.

And THEN you can go back to pressing play on Grand Theft Anal 11...and doing, whatever. Aren’t porn titles great? Like I’m going to be able to write Best of Blackzilla or The King of Coochie 4 as I’m reviewing Transformers 2...  read more »