Hollywood
-
I am, or at least used to be, an avid quizzer with a special interest in movie trivia. (To the point where my wife used to turn to me during a screening of, say, Jodhaa Akbar, to ask me if I knew the name of the second elephant from the right in the battle scene
-
The American President is among the most entertaining rom-coms I’ve ever seen. A big part of it is the fact that the rom works (Michael Douglas and Annette Bening simply click), and the com is fantastic. Michael Douglas has practically created a sub-genre of movies where he starts off suave and ends up disheveled with
-
Ever had a meal where you had so much to eat that the flavours just piled up on your tongue, one on top of the other, so you couldn’t really recall what the heck it was that you ate? The cinematic equivalent of that experience is called Iron Man 2. Let’s see: You’ve got Tony
-
There is a moment in Bandslam when the hero Will Burton (played with appropriate geekiness by Galean Connell) is being consoled by his mother (played with appropriate kookiness by Lisa Kudrow). She begins to explain why she got married to his dad, and we’re thinking, okay, we know how these conversations go. Until Will interrupts
-
Twice last year that I know of, films were made about real life sporting greatness and the men who made it so. Both films focused not so much on the sportsman/men but on the ones who inspired them to greatness. But the more interesting commonality was that they were both set in situations that could
-
I am not yet so deluded as to call myself a critic of any standing. I write about the movies because I love them, and because I love to talk about them. And that includes talking about the stuff I love as much as the stuff I don’t. In some ways, this blog and you
-
Perhaps one ought to recognize a genre that can be described as “Shut Up and Watch” movies. While this applies to the audience in most cases, in this case I refer to instructions for the filmmakers. Or to be more specific, movies where the instruction was followed. A very small group of films qualify. Of
-
The Blind Side tells the story of a homeless African-American teenager who is taken in by an affluent white family and goes on to become a big football player. Much of the marketing emphasizes the “big” portion of that phrase — indeed, Michael Oher pretty much doubles the combined volume of the Tuohy family when
-
Beware: Here be spoilers! There is a crucial moment in Up in the Air when Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) finds himself having to talk someone out out of a course of action. It doesn’t help that the other man’s beliefs echo what he has been preaching all these years. Bingham even moonlights as a self-help
-
The most obvious reason to watch Network is that it is a satire on television that now looks almost like reality TV. However, it also plays as a wonderful drama about old men searching for relevance in a changing world. While the focus is on Peter Finch’s fantastic performance as Howard Beale, William Holden’s Max Schumacher
24 frames per second 