While Spider-Man 3 may have smashed budget and opening weekend box office records, I am afraid it also trampled my high expectations, as unrealistic as they may have been. While the notion of a revelatory comic book franchise sequel may sound absurd, I submit that Spider-Man 2 was exactly that. I think even those who [...]
Entries from May 2007
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
May 30th, 2007 · No Comments
Tags: Action/Adventure · Comedy · Comic Book · Drama · Popcorn · Review · Romance · Sci-Fi/Fantasy
The Fountain (2006)
May 23rd, 2007 · No Comments
While it seemed to divide critics and be largely ignored by the public, I knew that I would lament not seeing The Fountain on the big screen. Now having seen the film on DVD, I am left only to lament not having a huge television and a Blu-ray Disc player. Set simultaneously in three times [...]
Tags: Director · Drama · Review · Romance · Sci-Fi/Fantasy
The Last King of Scotland (2006)
May 16th, 2007 · No Comments
Biopics are Oscar fodder, especially of late, so one wouldn’t be unreasonable to view the attention Forest Whitaker received for his role as General Idi Amin Dada with at least a slight degree of scepticism. That is, of course, until one experiences that performance. I have always respected Whitaker, as much for his strange collection [...]
Tags: Action/Adventure · Biographical · Drama · Review · War
General Idi Amin Dada (1974)
May 14th, 2007 · No Comments
Barbet Schroeder’s “self portrait” of Uganda’s charismatic and sociopathic leader, General Idi Amin Dada, is highly recommended viewing, especially prior to experiencing Forest Whitaker’s Oscar-winning performance in The Last King of Scotland. Schroeder was given amazingly intimate, yet hardly candid, access to the dictator. The ironic result of this bizarre collection of staged scenes is [...]
Tags: Biographical · Capsule · Documentary
Charlotte’s Web (2006)
May 12th, 2007 · No Comments
Of course by now everyone knows about the most exciting and heroic web-slinger ever. What? No, not Spider-Man. I’m talking about Charlotte, the spider with a vocabulary as strong as her spinners, brought to life in 1952 by author E.B. White. Although Charlotte’s Web was one of my favorite books as a child, the live-action [...]
Tags: Capsule · Family · Popcorn
The Band Wagon (1953)
May 10th, 2007 · No Comments
This Fred Astaire musical is in the list of 1001 must-see movies, and for the first half of the film, I was seriously doubting why it deserved special recognition. Whether as a result of a bold mirroring of the film’s plot or simply coincidence, however, the last reel is truly extraordinary. Like many musicals, the [...]
Tags: Capsule · Comedy · Musical · Popcorn
Eight Men Out (1988)
May 7th, 2007 · 3 Comments
Eight Men Out is John Sayles’ rather straightforward telling of the 1919 “Black Sox” Scandal. I suspect Sayles is a baseball fan, and he gives the story the respect it would never get in the studio system. Yet while the director shows here (and elsewhere) that he is a talented storyteller, he also confirms that [...]
Tags: Biographical · Capsule · Director · Drama · Ensemble · Sport
Here are this morning’s Oscar-nominated films, alphabetically. The nominees for foreign language film and documentary feature are compiled at the end of the list. (Short format nominees are listed in a 
