I especially liked the battle sequence at the end with its darkness, its massed robotic antagonists, and the feeling I was seeing some real cartoon malevolence the likes of which I haven’t seen since Oogie Boogie in Nightmare Before Christmas.
All in Comedy
Yasujiro Ozu's GOOD MORNING
It’s the late 1950’s in a new cookie-cutter Tokyo suburb. Two young brothers are eager to get a television. A young couple nearby has one which they let the kids watch (they love sumo wrestling) but the kids’ parents are concerned that the young couple’s laid-back attitude will rub off on the kids.
Richard Curtis' LOVE ACTUALLY
Back in the Day, the phrase “English ensemble actor film” brought to mind names like John Gielgud, John Mills, Alec Guiness, and Trevor Howard. Love Actually shows how far we’ve come when we can watch a blank-faced actor like Martin Freeman ( Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) nonchalantly chatting away while feigning naked sex with his soon-to-be-girlfriend.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I can take 5 or ten minutes of tongue-in-cheek, but a whole movie, plus annoying characters?
Peter Jackson's “DEAD ALIVE”
I’m not sure what this says about me and my taste in movies, but I think this film is some type of masterpiece.
Lynn Hershman-Leeson's TEKNOLUST
This movie is like a breath of fresh air. The story is original, the acting is uniformly engaging, the dialog is witty, and it looks cheap in all the right places. It’s an in-your-face-reminder that you don’t need a bezillion dollars to create something fresh, entertaining, and original.
Spongebob Squarepants: The Movie
How many movies can show the main characters getting drunk on ice cream?
Sue Brooks’ “Japanese Story”
Toni Colette (About a Boy) shines in this fishes-out-of water story.
Cédric Klapisch’s “L'Auberge Espagnol”
Imagine what it would be like as a young man to spend a year in Barcelona with an apartment full of male and female students drawn from all across Europe.
Monster Man
A bar full of amputee rednecks. Road trip guys chased by giant monster truck driven by faceless horror. Sexy scantily-clad hitchhiker. Giant pentagrams. Headless corpses. Fart jokes. Blood and gore up the wazoo. Road kill fantasies. This movie has it all.
Wes Anderson's THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU
I admit it. I'm terminally unhip. But I really enjoyed this movie. I put it right up there with Buckaroo Banzai and Repo Man, and that's very good company.
While watching this film I Imagined I was seeing an alternate universe view of a hybrid Charles Addams/Edward Gorey/Roald Dahl world as seen through the eyes of a child.
Brad Bird's THE INCREDIBLES
The house was packed. The movie was terrific. We had a great time. Another Pixar triumph.
So what is so great about this movie? It’s funny, the action is nonstop, the characters are memorable, the animation excellent, the dialog is witty, the satire is clever.
George Plympton's MUTANT ALIENS
I saw this on the Sundance channel, so I didn’t get a chance to see any DVD extras. Still, that’s quite enough. As a great fan of animation I love Plympton’s quirky, jiggly style, and his lewd, schoolboy humor sometimes transcends its frequently sophomoric origins. (Really, how many visual representations of an erection can you think of?)