When Chuck Goes Up
By bukkhead | January 25, 2008
FILM REVIEW: ‘GOOD LUCK CHUCK’
Written by Josh Stolberg , based on a short story by Steve Glenn
Directed by Mark Helfrich
Rated R
96 mins.
I’ve seen bad movies that were actually pretty good, and good movies that weren’t really so great. Waiting was not a good movie, but I enjoyed it. Same for Employee of the Month. As Good As It Gets got all sorts of acclaim, and I thought it was awful. Good Luck Chuck, though, is easier to evaluate, because it’s a bad movie that’s just bad. And not the kind of bad you can enjoy. Just bad. Read the rest of this entry »
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I See You See Me See Me See You
By bukkhead | January 23, 2008
VIDEO GAME REVIEW: ‘PORTAL’
Developed by Valve Corporation
Distributed by EA
Platforms: Xbox 360, Pc
Genre: 1ST Person Platform Puzzle
Portal is only one fifth of The Orange Box, along with Half Life 2, HL2:L Episode One, HL2: Episode 2, and Team Fortress 2. So maybe I should only write one fifth of a review, just 100 words. But that would be a disservice, because Valve could have gotten away with packaging Portal all by itself. Maybe. I played through it to my hearts content through half a day, and usually games last a little bit longer than that. But it was a complete experience, from training to mastering, and so I feel it deserves the whole 500. Read the rest of this entry »
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I Know You Are, But What Am I?
By bukkhead | January 21, 2008
FILM REVIEW: ‘I AM LEGEND’
Written by Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman
Directed by Francis Lawrence
Rated PG-13
101 mins.
What does this say about a movie: I thought I wrote this review already. What I actually did was write a few sentences about it on my main blog. This is what I wrote: “[Choosing a movie for that night:] Sweeny Todd was first on our list, but none of the times or locations were convenient to us. So we opted for I Am Legend, which turned out to be better than I thought. The title has nothing to do with the movie, and Will Smith is a much better actor than the script deserves. But there was some good scare moments, and it was not a waste of time.” Read the rest of this entry »
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Poseidon Takes Manhattan
By bukkhead | January 18, 2008
FILM REVIEW: ‘CLOVERFIELD’
Written by Drew Goddard
Directed by Matt Reeves
Rated PG-13
85 mins.
I’d been looking forward to Cloverfield since I saw the trailer for it at last summer’s Transformers. I went to the web, got into the viral marketing thing. I bought a Slusho t-shirt. I made a page for my blog about it. I was into it. And I should know better, because 9 times out of 10, movies just don’t live up to this kind of hype. This, however, was that 10th time. Read the rest of this entry »
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Left Politics, Middle East, Right Stuff
By bukkhead | January 15, 2008
FILM REVIEW: ‘THE KINGDOM’
Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan
Directed by Peter Berg
Rated R
110 mins.
People are going to compare The Kingdom to Syriana, and I think that misses the point. It would be sort of like comparing Braveheart with Michael Clayton. You can go ahead and compare Braveheart with Rob Roy. If you want, compare Syriana to The Bourne Identity, even (although that’s a stretch). But just because The Kingdom and Syriana are both political, set in the Middle East, and putting an ugly face on disaster (it needs an ugly face put on it?) doesn’t mean the movies are comparable. Read the rest of this entry »
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The Killer As Tourist
By bukkhead | December 18, 2007
VIDEO GAME REVIEW: ‘ASSASSIN’S CREED’
Developed by Ubisoft Montreal
Distributed by Ubisoft
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3
Genre: 3rd Person Platform
I’ve got this crazy idea that there should be a college class called “History for Gamers,” which would give lessons on the eras in which video games set themselves. There’s a ton of WWII-era games out there, of course. But it would be cool to learn more about 1930s America and the Art Deco style, featured in Bioshock. And now that Assassin’s Creed has come out, I find I want to know more about the Crusades, the cities of Jerusalem, Damascus, and Acre. Read the rest of this entry »
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A Life Better Left Unexamined
By bukkhead | December 14, 2007
FILM REVIEW: ‘MARGOT AT THE WEDDING’
Written and Directed by Noah Baumbach
Rated R
91 mins.
Although Margot at the Wedding features an ensemble cast, the focus is on Nicole Kidman’s Margot, and quite literally, the lens. Noah Baumbach both writes and directs the film, and allowed to his cinematographer to use “old” lenses and natural light to give the film a darker look (and this is darker in the literal, not the poetic sense.) But even under the best of circumstances, it would be difficult for the other actors to merely be supportive. Jack Black and Jennifer Jason Leigh, not to mention Ciarán Hinds (from HBO’s “Rome”) don’t end up stealing scenes from Kidman, but they do distract from Baumbach’ story, about a neurotic woman’s slow breakdown in the only environment where she can be herself. Read the rest of this entry »
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To Live and Die in West Texas
By bukkhead | November 19, 2007
FILM REVIEW: ‘NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN’
Written by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, Based in the Novel by Cormac McCarthy
Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Rated R
122 mins.
When the Coen brothers direct a movie based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, you really have no idea what to expect. This is by design. From McCarthy we’ve seen such diversity as All the Pretty Horses and Blood Meridian. No Country For Old Men is as different from those as the Coens’ Fargo is from their Barton Fink. And yet, for all the variety and unpredictability of a Coen production, they are at their best when the pacing is slow and the lenswork is gritty. And so their collaboration with McCarthy’s novel is the perfect marriage. Read the rest of this entry »
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The Devil You Know is Better…
By bukkhead | November 19, 2007
FILM REVIEW: ‘BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD
Written by Kelly Masterson
Directed by Sydney Lumet
Rated R
119 mins.
The title of Sydney Lumet’s latest film come from an old Irish blessing: “May you be in heaven for 30 seconds before the Devil knows you’re dead.” It’s this theme of who knows what that carries the entire movie. Although the audience at any moment knows more than the characters in the movie, nothing is ever full revealed until the last act, leaving one to decide if these characters can be forgiven for the ignorance upon which they’ve acted. Read the rest of this entry »
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It Takes A Village…
By bukkhead | November 8, 2007
FILM REVIEW: ‘LARS AND THE REAL GIRL’
Written by Nancy Oliver
Directed by Craig Gillespie
Rated PG-13
106 mins.
If a man wants to be alone so he can fantasize about being in love, can we call that man a hermit? Lars is the quintessential loner (one suspects Asperger’s, but that would be too easy). He lives in a converted garage while his brother Gus and pregnant sister-in-law Karin live in the house, rebuffing their repeated requests to join them for breakfast, or dinner. It’s the same at work, where he’s got the eye of the new girl, a pretty blonde, answering her conversational attempts with just a shy grin and the occasional blink. Read the rest of this entry »
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