tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58660762011-04-21T18:35:07.739-07:00What, you want more?Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comBlogger431100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1116119348086753992005-05-14T18:03:00.000-07:002005-05-14T18:09:08.090-07:00

Hey, here's what I've written for FilmFocus UK over the past two months. I'm still on the staff there, but they've generally had things covered on their side of the planet for the last couple of weeks (and I've been very busy), so I haven't been called upon lately. I'll try to get an update here of what I've been seeing and what I think of it.ConstantineHostageDownfall (a.k.a. the Hitler movie)

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1110703853232970592005-03-13T00:42:00.000-08:002005-03-13T00:50:53.236-08:00

Hey dudes,So I've started writing weekly reviews for FilmFocus UK, meaning this blog hasn't been updated lately (not that it was being updated that much before, but anyway). Anyway, here are some links to what I've written there so far:Ocean's 12In Good CompanyThe Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (seriously, why don't more people like this movie?)Hide and SeekHotel RwandaHitchI swear I haven't just

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1105594426358537212005-01-15T22:39:00.000-08:002005-01-15T22:40:05.086-08:00

Normally, I would use this space to complain about how lousy this year was and how good choices for this list were ridiculously scarce, but I can't because . . . 2004 was a good year. Really good, actually: I saw more than enough films worthy of the Top Ten, and they weren't hard to find. On with it, then: 1. Kill Bill, Volume 2 (Quentin Tarantino) - I've heard the complaints: talky, rambling,

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1100397084089538792004-11-13T16:57:00.000-08:002004-11-13T17:51:24.090-08:00

I was sitting here making a list of all the films I've still got to review on this blog. It started getting ridiculously long, and I realized that the only way to knock them out now was to provide a super-condensed comment for each. I profusely apologize for this . . . Now in alphabetical order (because I really don't remember when I saw a lot of these): Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1096954046749389392004-10-23T20:36:00.000-07:002004-10-23T20:41:25.273-07:00

So, life interfered at the end of this summer, and I didn't write anything for two months. Taking on a lot of commitments will do that to a fella. But I've still been seeing movies, and now it's time for me to go into recap mode: Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky, 2004) - The most prevalent argument I've heard against this rock doc is the old one about how rich and

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1091517027975444472004-08-03T16:47:00.000-07:002004-08-03T16:49:19.233-07:00

I'm going to do quite a lot of complaining in this review, so let me say this first: Spider-Man 2 is a perfectly good movie. Really. It's got a lot of exciting stuff, some good performances, and an almost shockingly consistent focus on character and theme over action and plot -- shocking, that is, for a big-budget studio action flick. I'm still exceedingly happy that Sam Raimi was given the reins

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1089678258796672542004-07-16T19:23:00.000-07:002004-07-16T19:35:08.066-07:00

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (Rawson Marshall Thurber, 2004) - Dodgeball is yet another example of lazy comic writing: a pretty good concept that makes use of almost none of the possibilities inherent to said concept. In other words, for a movie called Dodgeball, very little of it is actually about dodgeball. Most of the jokes are standard sexual/potty humor found in just about any other

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1088704662634524692004-07-01T10:39:00.000-07:002004-07-02T13:54:26.903-07:00

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban continues the ever-improving argument in favor of giving talented indie filmmakers a big-budget toy to play with. This time, the Harry Potter franchise has been turned over to Alfonso Cuaron -- known best for his low-budget Mexican hit Y Tu Mama Tambien -- and his entry into the series feels like a breath of fresh air. Chris Columbus had competently and

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1087716822029258892004-06-20T00:17:00.000-07:002004-06-20T13:09:53.516-07:00

As critiques of current environmental policy go, Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow is hardly the most nuanced. Even so, it's still a little bit jolting to see this mainstream summer action flick taking obvious shots at the current administration: Emmerich includes a "President" character depicted as a slack-jawed gawker who constantly has to enter rooms and ask what everyone has been

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1087066041861508482004-06-12T11:20:00.000-07:002004-06-13T11:32:10.103-07:00

Hands up, all those who remain baffled at the immense success of the first Shrek film . . . okay, probably not that many hands up right now, but there must be at least a few who, like me, saw Dreamworks' Shrek as an entertaining-but-disposable film saddled with an inflated notion of its own greatness. There was a certain hypocritical smugness to the Dreamworks method -- lambasting fairy tales as

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1085874636215159372004-05-29T15:29:00.000-07:002004-05-30T13:20:15.606-07:00

Okay, so here's . . . everything: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter . . . and Spring (Kim Ki-duk, 2003) - For a while now, I've been struggling with my dissatisfaction with Kim Ki-duk's Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter . . . and Spring. It's the sort of film I should like: Asian philosophy, lush cinematography, good performances, and so forth. For some reason, though, all that didn't keep me from finding

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1084690817609622782004-05-15T23:04:00.000-07:002004-05-16T18:17:27.343-07:00

Being busy, being sick, being lazy -- all these things contributed to a long neglect of this journal. I had wanted to write longer reviews of some of these films, but as I saw several of them about a month ago, I can't really do that now. So here's another one of those, you know, Dreaded Capsule Posts. Dogville (Lars Von Trier, 2004) - What was it Mr. Burns said about Marge Simpson's painting? "

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1082599094139248832004-04-21T18:58:00.000-07:002004-04-23T19:58:39.296-07:00

Okay, here's another one of those, you know, catch-up posts. Sorry, but I just wanna get to some of the more interesting stuff I've seen in the last month. The Ladykillers (Joel & Ethan Coen, 2004) - You know all those things people criticize the Coen Brothers for? Arch dialogue, unsympathetic characters, nasty stereotypes, etc.? In The Ladykillers, I can finally see them -- or rather, they

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1082232944942161762004-04-17T13:15:00.000-07:002004-04-17T13:19:45.903-07:00

Walking Tall is a remake of a previous film of the same name, but it's more accurate to call it a remake of every vigilante-justice film ever made. I don't think there's a single element that wasn't lifted from some other movie: the loner returning home, the bad guys making false overtures of kindness, the ludicrous courtroom scenes, the attempt to justify the protagonist behaving like a wrecking

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1081665685856239042004-04-10T23:41:00.000-07:002004-04-11T00:34:56.043-07:00

Going into Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I was working on the theory that Spike Jonze may be the only director able to properly visualize a Charlie Kaufman script. After all, on the "good" side of Kaufman movies, I had Being John Malkovich and Adaptation (both directed by Jonze), and on the "bad/mediocre" side, I had Human Nature (directed by Michel Gondry) and Confessions of a Dangerous

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1080975419217916532004-04-02T22:56:00.000-08:002004-04-03T17:35:42.686-08:00

What more is there to say? If you dare, wade into the Passion of the Christ discussions over at the Cinemarati roundtable -- it's all been said there. But since I promised myself I'd say something about every new film I see on this blog, here are my two cents: I'm willing to give Mel Gibson the benefit of the doubt and believe that he's doing something for the sake of honest personal expression

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1080450669415837502004-03-27T21:11:00.000-08:002004-03-28T10:48:15.623-08:00

In David Mamet's State and Main, there's a scene in which Alec Baldwin exits a car he has just crashed into a lamppost and remarks, "So, that happened." With that line, Mamet had, unwittingly or not, encapsulated his entire approach to filmmaking. Spartan, his latest effort, continues in the bare-bones Mamet tradition: the President's daughter has disappeared, apparently kidnapped, and those

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1079831972301926712004-03-20T17:19:00.000-08:002004-03-21T01:33:08.186-08:00

I'm not even rating it that highly, and I still think I may be slightly overrating Starsky & Hutch simply for being the first new film I've seen in 2004 that wasn't a chore to watch. It's not a great film, or even a very good one, but it's amiable, it's charming, and it has spirit; it's not the kind of movie you can easily hate. Sure, the film repeats its "Weren't the 70's funny?" jokes long

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1078566111403311702004-03-06T01:41:00.000-08:002004-03-07T17:39:26.403-08:00

That's right, for the first time . . . films of 2004 reviewed here. And it only took me until March to do it. Perhaps the reason for this delay is that most of these films suck. A warning: I'll be calling the writers out quite a lot here, and though I realize that meddling producers, directors, actors, and the like could be responsible for the script problems, I've got to blame someone, you know?

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1077002256005081272004-02-16T23:17:00.000-08:002004-02-17T15:23:18.983-08:00

I know, I promised the previous catch-up was the last catch-up, but well, I don't live in New York, so sometimes 2003 stuff comes here (San Francisco) a ways into 2004. I'm sure the longer reviews will start up again soon, but for now, I'll keep doing this. The Company (Robert Altman, 2003) - Those who prefer some kind of adherence to the Aristotelian unities in their film scripts probably won't

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1076031507117288322004-02-05T17:38:00.000-08:002004-02-06T20:05:37.903-08:00

Well, I figure it's time I finally nail this thing down (though regular Cinemarati roundtable readers will already know the makeup of this list, since it hasn't changed). Comments on the year? Around mid-year I was thinking 2003 was going to wind up as the worst one for cinema in the last ten years by a longshot, and it did, just not by the longshot I expected. The biggest problem is not a lack

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1075525773224158952004-01-30T21:09:00.000-08:002004-02-01T00:50:01.543-08:00

Freaky Friday (Mark S. Waters, 2003) - First off, let's get it out of the way that the whole "Chinese restaurant" business with the "magic fortune cookie" curse with "Asian voodoo" is really fucking stupid. I mean, Jesus, dudes, are we still peddling this old stereotype in the year 2003? Come up with some better writers, etc. Anyway, that off my chest, I can also say that despite the lame/racist

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1073969421478708282004-01-12T20:50:00.000-08:002004-01-18T01:58:06.043-08:00

The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet, 2003) - I'll say this for it -- The Triplets of Belleville is easily the most aggressively weird film I've seen all year. And while the visuals sometimes tend towards the overly-grotesque, the humorous invention and quality animation generally make up for any such problems. Major props to the music (including the terrific theme song, "Swinging

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1073035454103029752004-01-02T01:24:00.000-08:002004-01-02T01:33:21.130-08:00

'Tis the season to play catch-up with everything I've been seeing in late December/early January, from the glut of Oscar hopefuls to stuff I missed earlier and want to see before the Cinemarati awards deadline. Though I'd love to write about some of these films at length, I'm afraid there just isn't time -- if I waited to do so, I'd end up forgetting about what I'd seen. As you may have guessed

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1071286406417820242003-12-12T19:33:00.000-08:002003-12-13T01:45:57.943-08:00

Last week, I saw Gus Van Sant's Elephant, a film that almost seems to defy analysis. Van Sant's method, as with his previous film, Gerry, strives for something as close to utter objectivity as you can get in a fictional narrative film. He follows several groups and individuals at a high school on the morning before a shooting not unlike the one at Columbine five years ago. His camera follows each

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1071203052823386852003-12-11T20:24:00.000-08:002003-12-11T20:26:09.373-08:00

Upon viewing the trailer for The Missing, I had the immediate urge to remark, "So, it's The Searchers by Ron Howard." (I restrained myself, however, as I'd already made snide remarks about most of the ads that preceded the trailers that preceded the film, and figured enough snideness was enough.) The film did little to wash away that impression; it's about the search for a kidnapped daughter,

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1069926072850382322003-11-27T01:41:00.000-08:002003-11-27T01:49:06.590-08:00

I've been getting behind on these things, so rather than put myself through the angst of trying to write longer reviews of each of them (augmented by the whole Thanksgiving thing), here are some quick takes of what I've seen recently. Just don't expect plot summaries. The Station Agent (Thomas McCarthy, 2003) - A good film, with some terrific performances (Peter Dinklage holding down the lead,

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1069397488281600682003-11-20T22:51:00.000-08:002003-11-20T22:51:35.000-08:00

Um, well, argh. I don't think much of this movie. I don't mean I dislike it. I mean it did little for me one way or the other. Director Clint Eastwood seems to consider this story something great, tragic, operatic, Shakespearean, etc., but I couldn't help but feel that the rather pulpy plot might've benefited from a more, well, pulp aesthetic. All those soaring crane shots and Big Emotional

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1068707203951793612003-11-12T23:06:00.000-08:002003-11-12T23:09:23.773-08:00

The most disappointing thing about The Matrix Revolutions is not that it fails to keep up the genre-bending friskiness of the original The Matrix, nor that it fails to continue the philosophical rambling of The Matrix Reloaded. The most disappointing thing is that it's barely recognizable as a Matrix film at all. Revolutions, for a good portion of its running time, looks like it could be almost

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1068703848210695162003-11-12T22:10:00.000-08:002003-11-12T22:10:53.473-08:00

Bubba Ho-tep is the kind of film that should be made on a big budget, but it's also, obviously, the kind of film that would never be given a big budget. Let's see: Elvis (or at least a guy who claims to be Elvis) is living in an old folks' home in the South, his best friend is a black man who believes he's JFK, and their home is being attacked by a mummy. Naturally, the mummy is a big deal to

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1068091994116405462003-11-05T20:13:00.000-08:002003-11-05T20:23:12.423-08:00

I've been reluctant to write a review of this film for two reasons: (1) It's not finished, and (2) there's so much going on in it, in terms of the little referential details and chronological shifting, that I felt a second viewing was demanded before I could write about it. Well, I've seen it again, and I'm still having trouble coming up with something to say. So, I figure, to heck with the

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1067150911579173452003-10-25T23:48:00.000-07:002003-10-26T01:22:49.793-08:00

To say that Runaway Jury is far-fetched is to say that Kill Bill is a little violent. Frankly, the entire premise of the film -- that a clandestine "company" can keep tabs on all prospective jurors for a big trial, and charge millions of dollars for their services -- is completely preposterous. Granted, this is Grisham-land, where lawyers lead more action-packed lives than Indiana Jones, and

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1066543370129264142003-10-18T23:02:00.000-07:002003-10-19T21:35:30.620-07:00

The one thing about Intolerable Cruelty that sent up warning flags in my mind came during the opening credits, and it's not the already-expected "produced by Brian Grazer" credit, as you might think -- it's when the writing credits turn up, and unlike with other Coen efforts, there are other names tossed in there along with Joel and Ethan Coen. Most tellingly, while the brothers share

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1066021510001312412003-10-12T22:05:00.000-07:002003-10-12T22:10:15.100-07:00

After watching Better Luck Tomorrow, I read that the film had actually been criticized by Asian-American groups for its negative portrayal of Asian characters. My response to that is fairly simple: What? Before we get into a discussion of whether or not the portrayal was negative, let's just pose a question: Can you name any film featuring American-born Asian characters, in all the principal

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1065684203007317712003-10-09T00:23:00.000-07:002003-10-12T21:49:15.176-07:00

Against all reason, I love Jack Black. I should hate him -- he's a ham, he's loud, he's obnoxious -- but Black does something with his overacting that resonates with conviction. The best basis for comparison I can think of is Toshiro Mifune (now, bear with me here . . .); there's very little that's natural or subtle about Mifune's samurai performances, but it doesn't matter -- every sound,

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1065596883365252902003-10-08T00:08:00.000-07:002003-10-08T00:10:54.923-07:00

It's official -- The Rock is legit. He's got prospects. He's bonafide. Obviously, he had already accomplished this in the wrestling ring, but The Rundown sees him finally prove himself as a movie star. The best thing about his performance in this film is that he's not phoning it in; you can see him making the effort to create a character, know the circumstances, and engage the audience. I'm

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1065432735223776892003-10-06T02:32:00.000-07:002003-10-06T02:41:18.113-07:00

While catching a few episodes of this anime series on Cartoon Network, I was struck by its similarities to Batman: The Animated Series. Not only does The Big O strike a visual resemblance to Batman, it also contains characters clearly inspired by the Dark Knight's entourage: Roger Smith is the hero, a millionaire playboy who moonlights as a crimefighter (he's the "negotiator" for the city,

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1065256016080562062003-10-04T01:26:00.000-07:002003-10-04T01:26:55.896-07:00

Let's get it out of the way first: Once Upon a Time in Mexico is silly, overblown, almost entirely incomprehensible, and way too violent for its own (or anyone's) good. It's also, on some level or another, totally fucking awesome. Sure, more a series of hey-isn't-that-cool scenes strung together than an actual movie, but the difference between this and other such movies is that the scenes in

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1065067390073525132003-10-01T21:03:00.000-07:002003-10-01T21:22:18.430-07:00

This should've been a whole heck of a lot better, but it falls into the same trap that a lot of genre exercises do: It's much more enamored of all the incidental cool stuff that comes with its premise (vampires vs. werewolves, in a nutshell) than it is with telling a good story. Underworld seems to assume that we already know exactly what the vampires can do, and why they're fighting werewolves,

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1064732142212348402003-09-27T23:55:00.000-07:002003-09-27T23:59:04.616-07:00

As I understand it, the scenario put forth in Love Hina is a fairly common one in anime: a frustrated (both sexually and otherwise) young man is forced by circumstance to live with a bunch of beautiful young women. In this case, it's Keitaro, frustrated by his failure to get into the prestigious Tokyo University, somehow roped into becoming the manager of a girls' dormitory when his grandmother

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1064725498971991912003-09-27T22:04:00.000-07:002004-04-24T18:18:13.840-07:00

Before this thing gets too unwieldy, I'm going to start an archive page right here, for handy cataloguing needs. Reviews will be listed alphabetially by title, and this post will be linked to on the sidebar. 2004 Along Came Polly The Big Bounce The Butterfly Effect Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Eurotrip Hellboy Jersey Girl The Ladykillers Miracle The Passion of the Christ Scooby-Doo 2:

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1064636441337957962003-09-26T21:20:00.000-07:002003-09-26T22:44:12.753-07:00

The problem with Lost in Translation is that it's going to be very hard to explain to someone who doesn't like it exactly what the appeal of the film is. What can you say, really? There's not a whole heck of a lot of intellectual work to be done in unpacking or deconstructing the film -- it asks you to accept it purely on an emotional level, to drink in the mood, atmosphere, and humanity of it

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5866076.post-1064632644419019502003-09-26T20:17:00.000-07:002003-09-26T20:23:40.510-07:00

Well, what the hell, time to get started. Hopefully, this will lead to me posting all sorts of very interesting reviews of all the films I see. I say, hopefully. I'm Shay Casey, and you may know me from the Cinemarati, or from Daily-Reviews.com. You also may not know me, but that's okay -- I won't hold it against you.

Shayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10572269101009102084noreply@blogger.com