Square Eyes

the forgotten

The trailers for this movie are good. They give you the impression it's gonna be a tight, eerie suspense-filled thriller full of terror, loss and unreliable memory. They give you the impression that Julianne Moore is given work to do that's worthy of her estimable talent. They convey the message that someone has cared enough to craft a suspenseful thriller - something in terribly short supply these days.

The trailers for this movie are good, but they are chock full of lies.

The movie is a slapdash thriller that might make you laugh several times in scenes where this can't possibly be the director's intention. The visuals, save one, are unremarkable. Of course, if you've seen the trailer, you already know the one I'm referring to. If you haven't seen it yet, fear not. They use it eleventy million times in this movie. In fact, were I more of a cynic I might suggest that this entire filmic escapade was dreamed up as an excuse to use that one digital effect.

Julianne Moore and Alfre Woodard are way too talented to be in this movie at all, but they commit entirely and make it better than it deserves to be.

weak sauce. watch the trailer a couple times and call it good.

sky captain and the world of tomorrow.

Angelina Jolie needs to stop it with the British accents. She's neck-and-neck with Madonna in the "Most Annoying Pseudo-Limey" category at the "Why Are They Famous Olympics."

I could tell you that the plot is hackneyed and unrewarding. I could tell you that this movie badly apes the action serials it intends to revere. I could tell you that Gwyneth is getting a little old for the Polly Pureheart roles.

But you don't care. If you're the kind of person who can be kept out of a theater by implausible acting and underedited scripts, you aren't going to see this anyway. If you're not, and you just have to witness every inexorable step in CGI's eventual takeover of all entertainment (by which i mean you paid to see that "Final Fantasy" movie) then you're in luck.

It really is as visually stunning as they're telling you. The trailers don't have half of the prettiest stuff in the movie. Instead of making the mistake of trying to make the CG photorealistic, this film makes the actors look less real. They blend into their background because their edges are blurred, their lighting is made fantastical, and their colors are muted to match the mock-forties feel of the film. It doesn't work everywhere, but it's always striking.

I didn't leave the theater particularly concerned about the further exploits of the Sky Captain, but I did leave quite excited about how cool it's gonna be when they marry this tech with decent writing.

napoleon dynamite

This one could have reaffirmed my faith in something or other, were i inclined to have faith in things.

Genuinely funny.

It's limited, but it works its own limited scope for every drop of funny and ends on time. Stay long enough to see the extra scene after the credits.

There is no love like dork love, and no pain like dork pain. Wallow.

Give this dude your 9 dollars. You weren't going to use them for anything good anyway.

suspect zero

Our hero has dreams. Bad dreams. And the dreams give him headaches. How do we know? ON his first day at a new job, he sets two things down on his desk. A Costco-sized jar of aspirin and a book on the interpretation of dreams.

This is that kind of movie. Which is to say, crap.

Also, why is Gandhi even in this nightmare?

If you can read at grade level, this is not for you. If you can't, go see "Without a Paddle."

manchurian candidate

This is probably heresy, but I think i liked this one better than the original. But even as I say that, I wonder what it looks like to people with no experience of the original. Such people must be the bulk of the audience, and I wonder if the movie stands alone for them.

This adaptation serves mostly to update and modernize the now-tired cold war conceits of the first and replace them with vague dread of profiteering multinationals. In this it succeds.

The performances are good - I respectfully submit that Denzel and Meryl are better screen actors than anyone in the original cast - and affecting in a way that the morestylized predecessor couldn't allow. The story is still long and winding and full of only marginally useful digressions.

Well-crafted political thrillers are rare. If that's your bag, get to steppin.

garden state

There's really nothing wrong with trying to make "The Graduate" for your generation. In fact, I'm willing to stipulate that it's an honorable ambition.

There's not even any real shame in trying to make "The Graduate" for your generation and falling a bit short.

So three cheers for the "Scrubs" guy. It's a very confident first stab at directing, with strong visual style and even some affecting performances. They're kind of stuffed in among the normal first -time-small-budget stylee affected performances, but you really have to admire how much goes right.

The soundtrack is getting a lot of love, and it's pretty deserved. Both underscoring and commenting upon the movie, it's chock full of the kind of sunday coming down angst that sends you into the store to buy shins records.

Natalie Portman handily sheds the stigma of Amidala and gets back into acting, and Braff does a nice job of portraying mid-twenties paralysis. It's all a little precious, perhaps, but I challenge you to review "The Graduate."

Go ahead and see it.

alien v predator

The slogan is "No matter who wins - we lose."

I'm gonna leave it at that.

cellular

Kim Basinger is starting to get that Farrah glaze - both cosmetically and spiritually. Her face is strangely tight and shiny these days.

This movie is neither tight nor shiny. It's at least two plot twists too long and the hunky lead has all the charisma of a bag of clams.

jason statham coasts through on a one-note, or rather, one-grimace performance as welll.

also, as if i needed to tell you, phones don't really work that way.

watch three days of the condor and thank me later.

harold and kumar go to white castle

Deep down, I knew better. I'm not sure what made me override my flight impulse, but my flight impulse was right.

For the record: Pot is funny... if you're on pot. The Shofar probably wouldn't make a good bong/pipe/thc ingestion device and might even be creepily offensive to some.

Casting ethnic leads is a genius way to increase the amount of gross ethnic stereotyping you can get away with without looking like a tool.

Trust your limbic system kids. It's too dumb to lie.