Skip to content

Category Archives: Reviews: Movies

Terminator Salvation

I liked this movie. Everyone seems to be wanting all the subsequent Terminator sequels to be T2 all over again, and, well, it ain’t gonna happen. But this is a good movie in its own right, and if you don’t try to compare it to an all-time classic, you’ll like it too. The story takes [...]

Drillbit Taylor

I don’t know why Owen Wilson is famous. Or successful. He plays the same sort of character in every movie, reads his lines the same way, and has the same no-energy delivery no matter what the situation. If he were a stock I’d short him, because I can’t believe that people are still going to [...]

Miami Vice

Okay, this was a bad movie. I mean, I was prepared for it to be bad, but not bad. Gorgeously shot and heavy on atmosphere, pretty much everything else disappoints (and that’s not easy to do when you have Michael Mann directing and Gong Li in the cast). I don’t make a point of trying [...]

Rocky Balboa

I’ll admit it: I’ve got a soft spot for Rocky. Maybe it’s because I was sitting in the audience with a girl I really wanted to date when the first one came out way back when in 1976; maybe it’s because Sylvester Stallone always seemed like such an unlikely movie star, what with the thick [...]

The Natural

For all that the plot revolves around murder and corruption, this 1984 adaptation of Bernard Malamud’s novel brings to mind a more innocent age. It’s a story about baseball, set sorta-kinda in the 1930s, and has a lot of baseball’s lore and best moments woven into the story. Robert Redford heads up a truly all-star [...]

Transporter 2

Yup, watched the second one. More car chases, more elegant Gallic violence, more really unlikely stunts. The supporting cast here was good again. (I was surprised to see Matthew Modine in what amounts to almost a bit part.) Basically, if you liked the first one you’ll like the second and vice versa. The main draws [...]

Transporter

This French-made film (mostly spoken in English) was good for a lazy Friday night with nothing better to do. The plot was paper-thin and some of the acting downright silly, but overall if you want some mindless action and violence it isn’t a bad movie. The idea is: an ex-military special forces type now is [...]

V for Vendetta

V for Vendetta is based on DC Comic book / graphic novel of the same title. Mysterious V is a masked man trying to start a revolution to overthrow a totalitarian government. He helps Evey and they engage in a very complex relationship. Although the movie is a bit overdramatic at times, it raises an [...]

Pitch Black

This prequel to the more heavily publicized (but not as good) Chronicles of Riddick was the first movie that really showcased Vin Diesel to good advantage. He plays a captured murderer, one who escapes when his transport spacecraft has to make an emergency landing on an unknown planet. A few of the passengers survive, then [...]

X-Men – The Last Stand

Quite enjoyable, if not quite as good as the previous installment in the series. I don’t think that this was due to any particular lack in the story per se, but more because of the much larger cast that had to be slotted into the movie and a certain lack of attention to detail. For [...]

Doom

This movie was pretty much what you’d expect it to be: a large amount of macho posturing combined with lotsa violence. In other words, highly enjoyable. I was never really a fan of the game DOOM, but wanted to see this movie just because I knew it’d be a couple of hours of mindless fun. [...]