Quantum of Solace
Silence is Golden, But is Solace? Starring: Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko By Robert Patrick Many of you probably don’t know, but I was waiting all year for a motorcycle to fly onto a fishing boat. Now, with the newest James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, fulfilling this wild pipe-dream of mine, I can sit back and sigh. Marc Forrester, the director and apparent heir to the neo-Bond franchise, gives us the most explosive 007 feature ever...
Madagascar Escape 2 Africa
Because Numerals in Place of Words Makes You Sound Street By: Andrew Younger Starring: Ben Stiller, Chris Rock Like any young, white, middle class suburbanite, I often find myself experiencing a severe deficiency of African culture that I can co-opt as my own and reduce to utter pablum. Thankfully, the good folks at Dreamworks have done the hard work for me. Taking its rightful place in the pantheon of numerically inspired artistic...
Role Models
My Guild is Better Than Your Guild Starring: Paul Rudd, Seann William Scott By Robert Patrick When a film begins with a statue of a horse being sexually mounted in the middle of an elementary school, I probably wont end up liking it. Fortunately for the folks at Universal, the rest of the script wasn’t about the molestation of inanimate objects, so it had a fighting shot at getting a good review. Role Models, a movie about two best...
Soul Men
Bernie Mac Bares His Soul Onscreen Starring: Bernie Mac, Samuel L. Jackson By Tom Bevis It’s been a big year at the Hollywood mortuary. With the deaths of Paul Newman and Heath Ledger (hell, even trailer guru Don LaFontaine) still ringing in the ears of audience members everywhere, Bernie Mac’s death is likely to end up as a footnote on the 2008 obituary sheet. Mac, earning more fame from his standup than from his attempts at film and...
Changeling
Eastwood’s Sweeping Drama Goes for Gold Starring: Angelina Jolie, J. Michael Straczynski By Colleen Dillon Since I saw Changeling, over a week ago, I have been really unmotivated to write this review. I feel guilty because I like Clint Eastwood for some reason that allows me to appreciate his talent despite his stiff, John Wayne-type one-trick-pony acting. He is an icon from an era where, now, most other actors of his status are...
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Elizabeth and Seth Make a Bad Movie Starring: Seth Rogan, Elizabeth Banks By Robert Patrick Before he passed away in June of ‘07, Joel Siegel found himself offended beyond his wildest dreams. While attending an advance screening of Kevin Smith’s Clerks II, the mustachioed Good Morning America critic shouted at the screen in outrage. “First movie I’ve ever walked out on in 30 [expletive] years,” he belted out, making sure...
Pride and Glory
A Cop Movie Without Robert Duvall Starring: Colin Ferrell, Ed Norton By Robert Patrick Pride and Glory, director Gavin O’Connor’s law enforcement drama, wont be breaking any new ground, I’m sure. But it is a fairly entertaining little homage to the action genre. The film’s plot is about a family of police officers, whose legacy is universally respected, being pulled into the corrupt underbelly of crime. The movie, as you can probably...
Body of Lies
Crowe Overweight; Unhealthy Starring: Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio By Robert Patrick Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies begins with an explosion that eradicates a building complex – leaving the screen purged by a flash of light. It’s certainly not an innocuous opening scene for the director’s esoteric political thriller, but it does set a rather evident tone to the rest of the two hour film. Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a...
Appaloosa
A Distracting Western Dust Up By Colleen Dillon Watching Appaloosa, I was pleased to find that my expectations for the movie were being adequately met. After last year’s 3:10 to Yuma, I felt a spark of excitement at the thought that the Western genre was being revived. There, in James Mangold’s masterpiece, was the perfect formula for bringing modern viewers into the gritty stories of the Old West. And Appaloosa, too,...
Blindness
Clairvoyant Hands Starring: Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo By Robert Patrick Fernando Meirelles, displaying his acute fearlessness for moviemaking, gives us his most artistically provocative film to date with this year’s Blindness. Adapted from the universally heralded novel of the same name by Jose Saramago, Blindness is not only the most theatrically challenging picture of the year, but also one of the best. Some, most of whom will...
