I wonder if Robert Zemeckis weren't a filmmaker if he would have become a pilot. Look at his films and you may find a recurring shot in them, if not all then at least a good lot of them: a shot up in the sky, flying around and bringing the audience along (i.e. the feather in Forrest Gump, the pull-back through the valley and mountains in Beowulf, Back to the Future with the…
Continue
Added by Doctor Lightning on November 10, 2009 at 11:49am —
No Comments
I didn't believe for a moment that the "actual footage" in the movie The Fourth Kind was actually actual footage. Surely one would have heard of stories of a relatively unknown filmmaker named Olatunde Osunsanmi crafting a docu-drama out of footage from actual alien abductee interviews from some years ago. It should be no surprise that it is just a gimmick to make the story of UFO abduction more credible, which is all well and good. Indeed this wasn't even really the problem in and of itself I h…
Continue
Added by Doctor Lightning on October 30, 2009 at 1:32am —
No Comments
"I will kill anyone who touches you. Because that's my job."
The wonderful thing about the Road is that it will more than likely please the two camps: the one that has not read Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer prize-winning book, and the one that has. There's the nervous feeling one g…
Continue
Added by Doctor Lightning on October 22, 2009 at 1:07am —
3 Comments
Director
Kon Ichikawa had lived through world war two, and saw what its effects it had on his people in Japan. But so did novelist
Shohei Ooka, whose book was the inspiration for Ichikawa's film,…
Continue
Added by Doctor Lightning on October 19, 2009 at 11:44am —
No Comments
It's taken Spike Jonze a while to write, film, edit and (after some wrestling with Warner brothers over the final cut) release his adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. One who greatly admires filmmakers will wait especially for a filmmaker who takes his time in creating something after years of wait. Now, the filmmaker who first came on the scene with Being John Malkovich, once again gives me a one-word response with this third film of his: Wow. Hot damn. That's two more. Th…
Continue
Added by Doctor Lightning on October 16, 2009 at 3:15am —
1 Comment
The Howling and An American Werewolf in London were both released in 1981, and both include some of the finest werewolf make-up and special effects one will see in any horror movie. This today still I note this, that's how impressive both films are at it (and indeed Rick Baker worked on this one for a short while before transitioning over to 'London'). Fans and admirers can argue about the merits or…
Continue
Added by Doctor Lightning on October 14, 2009 at 2:00pm —
No Comments
The Coen Brothers give a line to its frazzled protagonist Larry Gopnick a line a few times during the course of
A Serious Man, "I didn't do anything!" that is more than just an homage to
Franz Kafka - it's ripping him off basically. This i…
Continue
Added by Doctor Lightning on October 4, 2009 at 2:36am —
6 Comments
In The Boys Are Back, a film based on the memoir by Simon Carr of the British newspaper the Independent, is about a character named Joe, a sportswriter who has a five year old boy living with his mother in southern Australia. Joe is away from home often and mostly sees the boy, Artie (Nicholas McAnulty) on holidays or the few times he can get away. He loves his wife (Laura Fraser) and kid a great…
Continue
Added by Doctor Lightning on October 1, 2009 at 10:40pm —
1 Comment
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
What is Capitalism? How do we define it in the 21st century? How did we define it even fifty years ago when America appeared to be riding high and the middle class did quite well without foreign competitors (without those, you know, other countries in E…
Continue
Added by Doctor Lightning on September 28, 2009 at 2:20am —
No Comments
The opening scene of
The Baader Meinhof Complex is a fine metaphor for what's to come in the rest of the movie, a mostly historically-accurate chronicle of radicals in West Germany getting their Marxist slings at those in po…
Continue
Added by Doctor Lightning on September 12, 2009 at 9:10pm —
4 Comments
Shane Acker has a good career ahead of him. At the least, one can only hope so. His talents expressed here, his first feature adapted from his short film of the same title, are immense and sharp and clear and dark and staggering and other words I didn't have time to look up for this review. He tak…
Continue
Added by Doctor Lightning on September 11, 2009 at 12:54am —
No Comments
In lieu of adding a bunch of descriptions or opinions on the movies (if need be I can link to the full reviews I've written, on spill or elsewhere online, for complete context), I'm putting up my top-11 movies of 09 so far in pictures, with a quote from each movie attached. Why top 11? As the Nostalgia Critic says,
because I like to go one step beyond.
11)
Tyson (
James Toback)
…
Continue
Added by Doctor Lightning on August 27, 2009 at 2:50pm —
2 Comments
Trifecta (from wikpedia):
a trifecta is a parimutuel bet in which the bettor must predict which horses will finish first, second, and third in exact order.
Spill readers, I've realized something which I should have fully understood before but only tonigh…
Continue
Added by Doctor Lightning on August 18, 2009 at 10:00pm —
7 Comments
Ponyo is the kind of movie you'll want to see to enjoy the- insert superlative/great-awesome-wonderful adjective here- animation, the outstanding and eye-popping wonders of water (yes, water) and all of the charact…
Continue
Added by Doctor Lightning on August 14, 2009 at 9:31pm —
No Comments
(Note, this review may contain spoilers, and cracks against Twilight)
The great thing about Thirst,
Chanwook Park's latest film, is that it's the anti-
Twil…
Continue
Added by Doctor Lightning on August 1, 2009 at 4:36pm —
13 Comments
"In Iraq, you're dead."
Early in the film, one soldier says this to another who is just starting on the job of being a soldier in a particular unit in Iraq. One might think it a lame line, and it's even mentioned as such right after the character says it. But it is,…
Continue
Added by Doctor Lightning on July 11, 2009 at 3:15am —
No Comments
Hey all,
Something I've thought about that nobody really ranks is favorite movie titles. It's one thing to rank the actual movie, or directors or actors or even things like writers or whatever. But nobody thinks about how creative a movie title can be, whether it reflects the film or it just has some kind of awesome poetry to it (yes, poetry, I said it).
So, here's a list of eleven favorites (since, you know, this goes to eleven), with one 'wildcard' pick. I may be leaving out some, or forgett…
Continue
Added by Doctor Lightning on July 1, 2009 at 10:13am —
No Comments
If there was anything
Akira Kurosawa did wrong in making
Dodes'ka-den, it was making it with the partnership he formed w…
Continue
Added by Doctor Lightning on June 28, 2009 at 11:50am —
3 Comments
This week instead of posting this on a Friday, you get it one day early, since Transformers: Revenge of Michael Bay's Uhinged and Posphorous Libido comes out a day early.
Movie Clip:
Ok, I have to admit, I'm not much of a fan of Transformers, just in general. I saw Bay's first movie, and saw it a little different than most did: It's not the worst movie of 07 (nothing can really top Bratz), but it's just a signal of everything that is shallow and commercial about Hollywood, a bottomless popcor…
Continue
Added by Doctor Lightning on June 25, 2009 at 12:30pm —
No Comments
Allen Baron didn't make that many films (maybe only two or three at most in a career mostly dominated by TV gigs), but perhaps one near-great film is enough. There are two kinds of directors in this world, my friend: those who ma…
Continue
Added by Doctor Lightning on June 20, 2009 at 7:19pm —
No Comments
