This section contains links to my occasional movie & DVD reviews. A complete index is here.
Exuberant, charming, and immensely entertaining, THE ARTIST tells ths story of a silent movie star in Hollywood whose career topples when talkies come along.
Comedy, Drama, One of a Kind, Silent The wheels of life grind slowly for all of us. Occasionally they mesh and multiple bad things happen to otherwise ordinary, even nice people. It’s the luck of the draw, or maybe just fate. In the end, we suffer, but how we deal with adversity says a lot about who we are.
Drama I enjoyed this a lot more than Part I which I found to be tedious and unengaging. This time the pace and excitement are unrelenting and occasionally spectacular.
This movie has some seriously arresting imagery: the upside-down floating castle, the castle’s gravity-defying maze-like passageways, the appearing/disappearing bridge to the spirit world, and a cataclysmic fire attack on Edo.
How can you possibly resist a gritty and bloody post-apocalyptic alternate-history vampire movie starring Paul Bettany, Christopher Plummer, Karl Urban, and Brad (“Wormtongue”) Dourif?
Updated on Tuesday, September 20, 2011 at 12:39PM by
Dennis D. McDonald
At first I was afraid this was going be a film of a stage production but it evolves into a series of dramatic tableaux featuring extraordinary lighting, costumes, and emotional histrionics straight out of Rembrandt’s paintings.
Biography, Fantasy, Intelligent, Mystery I loved this film. It’s a perfect demonstration of what I like in a popcorn film: fun, clever, interesting use of cliches, and lots of hats.
Action, Hats, Science Fiction, Western This courtroom drama follows the defense of Mary Surrat who operated the Washington DC boarding house where Abraham Lincoln’s assassins concocted their plot in 1865.
Drama, History, Intelligent I thoroughly enjoyed this film. The characters are engaging, the story is clever, and the animation is absolutely positively gorgeous, at times almost breathtaking in its use of glowing color.
Bullet point review:
Action, Aircraft, Fantasy, Quirky, Ridiculous, Robots, Science Fiction, War Roger Ebert in his review of this movie says “There is nothing to dislike about it.” If you read his whole review there’s clearly much to like about it, despite a rocky start.
Comedy I’ve enjoyed previous Harry Potter movies but I found this one to be tedious, boring, and pretentious. For the first time I found Harry, Hermione, and Ron to be uninteresting and unengaging.
This is one of the most emotionally engaging films I’ve ever seen. I’m not completely sure why.
Cosmic, Drama, Fantasy, Intelligent, One of a Kind Movie review by Dennis D. McDonald
Just because this movie is available on streaming Netflix, don’t waste your time. It’s awful. Specifically, it’s unoriginal, derivative, boring, and the characters are totally uninteresting and unsympathetic.
If you’re hankering for a real Los Angeles invasion flick, check out 1954’s THEM. It’s infinitely superior to this turkey.
Review copyright (c) 2011 by Dennis D. McDonald
Monsters, Science Fiction, Sucks, Turkey Back in my early days of reviewing films when my kids were growing up and still at home I created a special category called “Young People” where I placed movies that didn’t treat cinema kids like idiots or totally obsessed with sex and fart jokes.
Unrelentingly grim, this movie follows a group of 14th Century soldiers as they seek out a remote village in the English countryside that is rumored to have been spared a visit by the bubonic plague.
I enjoyed this movie a lot but it could have been much better had more attention been devoted to character and story.
The Ozark back country depicted in this film is one that Facebook and Twitter have ignored. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
Readers of my book and movie review will know about my occasional hankering for a Western. It’s no surprise I was looking forward to this movie especially given my positive reaction to my recent discovery of the novel.