Dennis D. McDonald (ddmcd@ddmcd.com)consults from Alexandria Virginia. His services include writing & research, proposal development, and project management.
Japanese school girl goes on rampage to wreak revenge on the murderers of her little brother, gets fitted with prosthetic arm/machine gun, ensuing action consumes more artificial blood and gore than any film in recent memory.
This is a very funny and beautifully prouduced piece of whimsy. The characters are interesting, the story is clever, the dialog is witty, and the voice performances are superb.
This animated tale about a young girl growing up in Iran during and after the Revolution as personal freedoms are inexorably removed is simultaneously touching and difficult to watch.
This is some movie. It’s scary, emotionally draining, funny, exciting, tense, thoughtful, violent, whimsical, cruel, and in a few places, just plain weird.
Although visually arresting, I thought Tarsem Singh’s THE CELL was inuman, inhumane, and tawdry. THE FALL is also visually gorgeous. It’s also clever, imaginative, and touching.
This extraordinary family film reminded me of the sense of wonder I experienced as a child reading my way through the best of the children’s fantasy and science fiction collection of my local public library.
Alex Proyas’ GARAGE DAYS is light years distant from DARK CITY. First of all, it’s a comedy. Second, it’s also a melodrama that concentrates on characters, sort of a “tale of death of youthful optimism” crossed with “sex drugs and rock ‘n roll.”
The story is simple: in the early 1920’s a young German mail-order bride, gramophone in hand, comes to rural Minnesota to meet her Norwegian husband to be.
This dizzying and perplexing movie bathes the viewer in a warm and beautiful gauze of, love, death, loss, and redemption. Forget the narrative and go with the flow.
What a sweet film this is. Not that it's all pleasant -- it isn't. But we do get to see inside someone's head, someone for whom dreams are reality and a way of dealing with the complexities of day to day life.