Most of my silent film watching is motivated by a star (Chaplin, Keaton) or a famous title (METROPOLIS, CALIGARI). Sometimes, like the Babe Ruth movie which popped up awhile back or the car racing movie SPEEDWAY, the viewing is born from a curiosity about the contemporaneous look or portrayal of something specific. Rarely do I see a description of a silent movie and think “Hey, that sounds cool” and just watch it. But that is what happened with DESERT NIGHTS.
Usually, this sort of adult drama-comedy-romance hybrid is not a genre I seek out in particular. However, with a cast of Tommy Lee Jones, Meryl Streep, and Steve Carell, I figured it was worth seeing!
WRECK-IT RALPH was a major holiday Disney release, done without the Pixar stamp. It is interesting to note the two separate animation studios under the one Disney umbrella. Walt Disney Animation Studios has stuck to more of the kid stuff, while Pixar has been widely acclaimed for its agelessness. The former has put out the recent WINNIE THE POOH and TANGLED and BOLT while Pixar has been making hit after hit with MONSTERS UNIVERSITY being the most recent release. With WRECK-IT RALPH, however, WDAS had a movie which looked to be made with the curiosity, retro reach, and attention to detail Pixar is famous for. So how did it turn out?
Sam Worthington does it for me as an action star. He doesn’t always pick the best movies, but he is good enough to make some generic stuff a little better. Really though, any small gimmicky suspense film based around a simple premise (like, say, a man threatens to jump off a building to buy time for a theft) is something I will flock to.
I feel like I’ve seen this movie recently enough to have written it about it, but apparently not. I guess it is just one of those movies that stays fresh in the mind. BEVERLY HILLS COP is certainly a classic of the action-comedy genre.
Most of my movie viewing is randomly drawn in the sense that I often don’t know what I plan to watch until a few minutes before starting it. With ENEMY OF THE STATE, however, there has been a prevalence of this film in the psyche of the news media since the NSA leak scandal by Edward Snowden. I figured it was time to revisit this movie, since I thought it was more of a standard 90s action flick: very high on entertainment, low on artistic or thematic value. It would be like someone comparing the Mexican drug wars to DESPERADO or a prison break to THE ROCK or Nicholas Cage’s career to TITANIC. I wanted to see if this movie really did have something to say 15 years later. So, you know, I watched it…
This is a movie I hadn’t heard of from a director I knew nothing about. Made in Japan in 1966, TOKYO DRIFTER is the story of a loyal yakuza member who attempts to go straight after his gang breaks apart. It sounded intriguing, so I figured I’d give it a run.
Continue reading ‘johnlink ranks TOKYO NAGAREMONO (TOKYO DRIFTER) (1966)’
Fortunately, it didn’t take me too long to get to the SHERLOCK HOLMES sequel. I really have nothing else witty to say, so on with the article…
Continue reading ‘johnlink ranks SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS (2011)’
Though a fairly constant fan of baseball, I have never been a huge follower of baseball movies. MAJOR LEAGUE was funny enough. But I’ve never seen classics like THE NATURAL or FIELD OF DREAMS or the newly popular MONEYBALL. Often that indifference is born out of a feeling like the movie I’m watching doesn’t mesh with what I know of the baseball I watch on TV (which is, perhaps, why LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN gets a pass, since it is clearly not intended to be like the baseball we watch on TV anyway). Anyway, I watched TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE last night. It is a baseball movie I did want to see.
Continue reading ‘johnlink ranks TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE (2012)’
The nature of this blog has me usually watching movies which, while perhaps not new to me, are new to the blog. However, this being my fifth year in, I think it is reasonable to assume that noone is going back and looking at my 2009 posts (and if you are… I do speaking engagements for a mere $10,000 a night). Despite this, I often find myself un-choosing a movie I might watch because I saw it years ago and how could I possibly repeat myself. Well, sure, yeah… I’m a nutjob. But every so often something happens (like needing to see a sequel but wanting to watch the first one again) which leads me to revisit a movie I’ve already discussed. I should be doing this more. Anyway, on with SHERLOCK HOLMES…
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