Hollywood
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Pixar has by now gotten to the point where, if they wanted to go The Producers route and make a really bad movie, they’d have to outsource it. By those standards, this isn’t in the same league as some of their best work. However, it has an emotional resonance that took me by surprise. Much
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When people are faced with a tragedy they cannot make sense of, they try to explain it to themselves in terms of things they understand and can control. They just need something to pin it on, something to channel their frustration into. Very often, a movie will concentrate on selling one of those explanations to
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My wife recently got a stack of Mills & Boon novels from a friend and basically devoured them over a couple of sessions. Seeing them reminded me of the problem I’d always had with M&B — neither is it good writing in service of a love story, nor is it sufficiently raunchy to fit in
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Just in case anyone ever accuses me of not having enough variety in my diet. Now, on with the reviews: Julie & Julia Imagine you’re a guy, and a vegetarian to boot. And someone told you that there’s this movie, about two hours long, featuring two women (and a couple of men by way of
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First things first. If you haven’t watched The Shawshank Redemption so far, please do the following: Compulsory: Find a DVD of the movie and watch it. If you happen to live in a small town where the only available copy of the DVD is with a curmudgeonly octagenarian neighbour of yours who insists on watching
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On the way back from watching Inglourious Basterds yesterday, I had a conversation with my wife that made me realize something. There’s no way you can actually convert someone to the Church of Tarantino. His style of filmmaking doesn’t lend itself to persuasive argument. Consider the opening scene of Basterds, for instance. Set somewhere in
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After having watched The Reader I realized something interesting: It is a movie about guilt and involves a former guard at Auswicz, but this description simultaneously tells you everything and nothing. I will not spend much time on the plot, which is beautiful. Or on the writing, which feels like a punch to the gut.
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Beware! There be spoilers. The sixth movie installment in the Harry Potter series is, to be honest, a bit of a disappointment.When I think about it, it seems like a Herculean task for it not to be. But I ask myself, should that really be my problem? Writing the screenplay for the sixth movie in
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I watched Quiz Show on TV eons ago and thought it was a wonderful film. But over the years, my memory of it faded to the point where I could only remember one scene with clarity. Recently, when it came on TV again, I stuck around to watch that scene and then zapped on to
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Right at the end of Pineapple Express — which follows Harold and Kumar Go to Whitecastle into the annals of the Improbably Good Stoner Movies — the three heroes have breakfast at a diner and unwind. I am no homophobe, but I believe that the only plausible human reaction to their conversation would be to
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