“Don’t stare at the midget” Based on an article that was published in Esquire, The Hunting Party tells the story of three journalists—actually five as the end of the film will explain during its comical “what was true and what wasn’t” montage—who took it upon themselves to find the most wanted war criminal in the world, Bosnia’s “The Fox”. Brought to screen by Richard Shepard, this is a movie that keeps you highly enthralled throughout. It may not be as solid a film as his previous effort, the underrated comedy…
Read MoreMonth: January 2008
REVIEW: Wristcutters: A Love Story [2007]
“The dog has spoken” Goran Dukic’s Wristcutters: A Love Story is indie cinema to the core. With a plot concerning life in purgatory—an adequate punishment being that it is life as usual, but a little worse—and a band of suicides (or off’d people) trying to find love, answers, and a way out, this film laughs at the mainstream and succeeds as a result. Everyone involved is a kooky, crazy character with little screentime yet large meaning. Zia just could not take it anymore and decides to end it all by…
Read MoreREVIEW: The Bucket List [2007]
“My main man Ray” With absolutely no interest in seeing The Bucket List, the opportunity presented itself to check it out. I enjoy most Rob Reiner films—I mean come on, he did The Princess Bride and This is Spinal Tap, he gets a reprieve for every other bad movie he makes—and love both Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, so I thought, what the hell? It ends up that the film was actually pretty good. The trailer does not do it very much justice, though. Sure all the sappy sentimentality is…
Read MoreREVIEW: Some Like It Hot [1959]
“Where did you get that phony accent? Nobody ‘talks loike thet!’” I was finally able to catch up with what many people call the funniest movie ever made, Some Like It Hot. This is now the first and only film I have seen with Marilyn Monroe as well as directed by Billy Wilder. The hype on these two seem to be correct and I look forward to checking out more from both. However, the real success of the film is the portrayal of our two leads by Jack Lemmon and…
Read MoreTop Ten Films of 2007: The Year of the Adaptation
It was a year of many genres. We had some musicals, a few dramas, comedies galore, a little sci-fi, and a couple bio-pics sprinkled in to satiate the kiddies and Oscar voters. If anything, I guess one trend seemed to rise above, that being the adaptation, whether from plays (Sweeney Todd), novels (Zodiac), or comics (Stardust). I always try to read first, but the shear amount this year prevented me from doing so, therefore I can’t quite say if they were all successes or not. In the end, after seeing…
Read MoreREVIEW: Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem [2007]
“I want Daddy to read it” When Alien vs. Predator hit theatres a few years back I had seen only Alien and Aliens from either franchise. I figured I didn’t really need to know every single detail of both series before viewing the combo and I was absolutely right. That film took it upon itself to build up a mythology that connected two alien races in a way that showed they’d been on Earth much longer than humans. The story was pretty intriguing and the fights never overshadowed what happened…
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