“You! Yeah, you in the suit! Take a shower, hippie!”
— Carl Fredricksen

Carl Fredricksen is one of the most endearing characters in recent film history. He’s a grumpy old and eccentric man who loved his wife beyond everything. And he hates people who bother him. (Who doesn’t?) It also helps that Fredricksen was partly based upon Spencer Tracy, and who doesn’t love Spencer Tracy! To make this paragraph even more erratic, Fredricksen reminds me of a censored, older version of Cartman. “Take a shower, hippie!” Who doesn’t hate hippies and who doesn’t automatically refer to people who annoy them as hippies?

Now, to get back on somewhat of an understandable track, Up is yet again a masterpiece by Pixar Animation Studios. They keep on producing works of art, regardless of subject matter. I’m telling you, Pixar could make an animated film about tumbleweeds and it would be a tour de force. People would weep, cheer and praise it. Read More »

“Born into a world of numbers, an oppressed zero discovers that through determination, courage, and love, nothing can be truly something.

Zero is a 12′47 stop motion animation written and directed by Christopher Kezelos and produced by Christine Kezelos. For more information, visit zeroshortfilm.com.”

“If the God hypothesis is a promising one, then we don’t need to appeal to faith. If the God hypothesis doesn’t sit well with the evidence we have, then we should reject it and it would be wrong to seek to cling to it by giving it some privileged exemption from criticism. Faith is always at war with truth, because if we try to make ourselves arrive at a predetermined conclusion, we run the risk of not dealing honestly with the evidence.”
— David Ramsay Steele

“Are you kidding me? RoboCop?!”
— Anchorwoman

There is only one good scene in RoboCop 3; an anchorwoman recites the fabricated news that RoboCop has once again killed a lot of people. Then, in the best performance of the film, her face turns to puzzlement and, while standing up, she shouts to her colleague, “C’mon, this is bullshit! Are you buying this? Are you kidding me? RoboCop?!”, and she just walks away. Which is what everybody should do when trying to watch any of the RoboCop sequels.

I remember liking the sequels when I was little, but perhaps that was because everything looked cool and awesome back then with all the explosions and the melodrama. However, I’m amazed that Michael Bay didn’t direct both of these. Sure, both films do actually have more depth than any film Bay has ever made, but they abide by the same basic rule: explosions equal entertainment.

Mega, gigantic update this week because I love you all! … All right, I was behind two weeks with my film ratings, so this week I’m catching up, and boy, it’s a good one. Funny Girl, Departures, Kathy Griffin, the RoboCop sequels, Drew Barrymore, an amazingly-campy Taylor-Burton flick, and Studio Ghibli in one update. An explosion of awkward randomness, if you ask me. Read More »

Usually I don’t post trailer reviews, because to be honest, not much can be said from just a trailer alone. I’ve seen films that looked fabulous in their trailer, but, as they eventually turned out, in their full form they were hideous little flops. To illustrate: the trailer of City of Ember looked very interesting and enchanting, especially because it featured “Academy Award nominated Saoirse Ronan!” However, we all know how great that film turned out to be. A trailer only features the best scenes and moments of a film, so it’s in no way a good representation of the overall quality of it.

I’m not quite sure why I started on such a negative note here, because everything I will say now about the trailer of Precious has been discredited beforehand. Nevertheless, trust me when I say that Lee Daniels’s Precious will be one of the best films of 2009. Yes, I’m making that statement by only having seen the trailer — sue me. Gabourey Sidibe is fierce, believable and incredibly talented as the main character, Precious Jones. If this girl is willing to work for it and to take good acting decisions, I’m foreseeing a great career for her.

She isn’t the only one in the film excelling. Mo’Nique, Paula Patton (who looks a lot like Alicia Keys from some angles) and even Mariah Carey — yes, Mariah Carey — are incredible. I’m not sure whether they keep this intensity when one views the entire film, but from what I’ve seen so far I’m willing to bet on it that they do.

Coming November 6, 2009 (limited release). A must-see motion picture, that’s for sure. Read More »

“People like Sheba think they know what it is to be lonely. But of the drip, drip of the long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. What it’s like to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the launderette. Or to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor’s hand sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. Of this, Sheba and her like have no clue.”
— Barbara Covett

Notes on a Scandal features two of the best actresses out there, Dame Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett. They each deliver superb performances, in a way in which you believe that you’re watching real life being played-out, instead of a screenplay moving along with actors presenting their dialogue and actions. Then why is it that I wasn’t entirely satisfied with this Rudin/Fox produced motion picture?

I haven’t read the novel by Zoë Heller, so I cannot really judge whether the story disappoints me because of the screenplay, or because the original source material isn’t satisfying me. There are some really good scenes in Notes, especially the ones with Dench (Barbara Covett) being a psycho bitch, but there are also a bunch of scenes which could’ve used some more depth and length.

Furthermore, I couldn’t stand Bill Nighy as Blanchett’s husband (Richard Hart). To be honest, I’ve never been a Nighy fan, so I’m a little bit biased; but in this role, in this film, Nighy is simply a distraction. Read More »