Eragon
Thanks to LOTR and Harry Potter, every December I need a good fantasy film. This year, Eragon was all I got which made for something of a sad year. Though, I keep seeing previews for Eragon and keep remembering it as good light fantasy fun.
Apocolypto
To begin with, I went into Apocalypto without knowing what to expect and I think this is the sort of film that is better that way.
I enjoyed it.
It’s very powerful emotionally and visually.
But know that it’s violent, not throughout but where it is – it’s savage and visceral. If you can handle that then I’d say it’s worth seeing.
Matt Damon
The Good Shepherd star on playing hard to get and still getting his due. In the realm of moments that movie stars should be embarrassed about, uttering one corny line in The Legend of Bagger Vance should not be something you wear like a hair shirt for the rest of your days. Drunkenly accusing the Jews of starting all wars? Yeah, that’s something you should probably regret. Getting arrested for pegging a bellhop in the head with a phone? Certainly shameworthy. But when Matt Damon describes the horror that overtakes him every time he thinks of the moment in Robert […]
The Prestige
The Prestige is an incredibly smart and intriguing film; very well made. It’s kind of like a magic trick because it tells you exactly what it’s going to do and then you’re still surprised and fascinated when it does it. Which is just masterful, to craft a film about magic that effects you like a magic trick. How cool is that?
George Clooney| Already a Classic
The perennial bachelor prankster is also Hollywood’s silver-haired statesman, making movies and speaking out for a basic American decency. Yet, open as George Clooney may seem, he remains as elusive as Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, and other classic stars he calls to mind. That’s not unintentional, learns the author, who visits Casa Clooney for a chat about the producer-actor-director’s latest film, The Good German. America projects two kinds of power in the world: hard power, which is tanks, jets, and missiles, and soft power, which, at the moment, is George Clooney. He is dashing, and charming. He put David O. […]
In defense of Orlando Bloom
The Haven star can act but it’s not easy to tell. Sarah D. Bunting is co-creator of TelevisionWithoutPity.com Orlando Bloom is not a bad actor. He isn’t Olivier, but he isn’t Shatner, either. Why, then, does everyone assume he’s a bad actor? For starters, he’s pretty. Not ‘handsome,’ mind you: pretty. The bulk of Bloom’s fame derives from his role as Legolas in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and while he acquitted himself well with a bow and arrow in those films, he also had very long flaxen hair, the sort that usually belongs to mermaids and Disney heroines. […]
BayWatch
In his Santa Monica headquarters, director Michael Bay is preceded down the hallway by two gigantic beasts. The flesh-colored English mastiff named Mason (after Sean Connery’s character in The Rock) is roughly the size of a Shetland pony. Grace (named after Liv Tyler’s character in Armageddon) is a year-old puppy, nearing the size where she too could be fitted for a saddle. As Bay steps into an office decorated with such props as the model for the space shuttle from Armageddon and a bomb from Pearl Harbor, he explains that his beloved canines recently forced him to trade in his […]
Mr. Pitt & His Magical Mattress
On a hot summer afternoon, the most glamorous birth father in America sits in a diner booth and tries to make sense of the world. A thunderous revving noise ruptures the quiet of the Spitfire Grill on a lazy afternoon in Santa Monica, California, accompanied by a series of subsonic reverberations that tinkle the ice cubes of my overfull water glass, breaking the surface tension, sending droplets down the side. Abruptly, all is still. The waitress resumes filling the saltshakers. Steely Dan harmonizes on the sound system overhead. The door opens, and he walks in–his helmet beneath his arm–like Achilles […]
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
The first time I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest I didn’t know what to expect, so I was paying all sorts of attention trying to figure out what I thought and why. I saw plenty of flaws and expressed the following criticisms…
Johnny Depp Plays it His Way
The defiant one: Johnny Depp has had studio executives squirming over his interpretations of how characters should be played. But “you’ve got to do what you believe in,” the actor says. It is dangerous for a rebel to be loved too much. Defiance is the troublemaker’s oxygen, and the surprise of a great big bear hug from the mainstream powers-that-be can be enough to choke it right out. There’s a temptation to wriggle free. Johnny Depp, one of his generation’s most iconoclastic actors, is in that situation now with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, the sequel to the […]