December 2012
1 post
10 tags
Flashback: 'Shrek'
Gonna be totally honest here: I really didn’t expect “Shrek” to hold up eleven years after its release. I was just about the right age when I did see it - grade school. See, lots of the glue holding “Shrek” together is totally inappropriate humor. The gross-out jokes work all the better considering the slime, maggots, and whatnot look almost photorealistic in this...
November 2012
5 posts
15 tags
Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 Review
This is going to be fun.
So, it is the wonderful conclusion to this blockbuster franchise that has been in the public sphere for almost five years. Now it seems that our lives will be “forever alone” without seeing Bella, Edward and Jacob on our movie screens.
Bella (Kristen Stewart) is finally a vampire and after having Renesmee (Mackenzie Foy) the Volturi think that Bella had a vampire...
11 tags
Flight Movie Review
So when I saw this trailer back during the summer, I was very intrigued. First, Denzel is back with something that seems worth paying to see in the movie theater and second, this movie looks intense in the material that is being presented: Not only with the plane crash but also with this man’s struggle with addiction.
Overall, I thought this movie was a solid movie, but not something to run...
15 tags
SPY VS SPY
Let’s start with what Skyfall is not. It is not a systematic reworking of the character as portrayed by a new actor. It is not taking the franchise in a radically new direction. It is not even an entirely traditional Bond film.
I’m okay with that. There’s already a place for those in the franchise, now 23 films strong. Skyfall is something different. I’m reminded...
9 tags
Wreck It Ralph
I think this was one of my most anticipated animated features this year (even more than Brave), and now that I have seen it and processed it….I really loved this movie.
This movie could have gone gimmicky and very kiddy, but it didn’t. It had so much respect for the video gaming world and brought the old school video games of the 80s and 90s along with the contemporary ones together and created...
19 tags
The Perks of Being a Wallflower Review
I heard the great buzz this movie was getting after reading some reviews from the Toronto Film Festival, and after learning that Stephen Chobsky, the author of the novel, wrote the screenplay AND directed it, I had to see this movie.
This movie was probably one of the best movies I have seen all year.
Logan Lerman plays Charlie, a freshman in high school who befriends these two seniors,...
October 2012
2 posts
Spineless: Secrets of the Lost Summer by Carla... →
spinelessreviews:
Generally, I don’t like romance novels. They always end too happily (I’m very much a realist) and the characters’ names are usually exceedingly quaint. That being said, I really liked Secrets of the Lost Summer by Carla Neggers, which surprised me. It was everything that I could want in…
19 tags
Some of the Best and Worst of the Summer Movie...
-art my Maya Mariner
Well, summer vacation has been over for over a month, and that means cuddly sweaters, bonfires and dorm room fleece blanket snuggle parties are on their way! But let’s reflect back to the summer for a minute: While most responsible college students interned, got a job, or volunteered over the summer, I stayed at home being a blob, sinking my couch into the floor, and...
September 2012
1 post
30 tags
Summer Movie Review
(From L-R: Brave, The Amazing Spiderman, 21 Jump Street, The Dark Knight Rises, Moonrise Kingdom, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The Lorax, The Hunger Games, The Avengers.) -Artwork by Jenna Bergstraesser
Rejoice, all ye merry Oberlin culture junkies - the Apollo is coming back, and just in time for the fall movie season! This is always an exciting time of year for me because many of the...
May 2012
2 posts
3 tags
Akeelah & The Bee: The Most Inspirational Movie of...
I’ve been feeling super Black lately, so I started watching Black films. Most of them are about sad, Black men in the inner city who watch all their friends die from gunshots before escaping the hood through either sports or music. Others are about fat, sixteen-year-old Black girls who are still in middle school, pregnant for the second time, raped, abused, have a child with downs syndrome, and...
1 tag
REVIEW: The Artist
It’s not actually that difficult to make a silent movie. Pop anything into a DVD player and watch it with the sound off for a while, and you might be surprised by how much you can understand. Pixar has experimented with the format for such recent features as WALL-E and Up, earning them high praise. In reality, much of the language of cinema is visual. That’s why it’s a...
April 2012
1 post
1 tag
Review: Tron: Legacy
I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but we’re in an age of escapists. I mean more so than usual. Popular film has nearly always been about the art of creating and subsequently enjoying fiction. But in recent years especially, the fantasy action blockbuster has taken hold. There’s plenty of source material for it. Film producers have used comic books, fantasy epics,...
March 2012
1 post
30 tags
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close: Thoughts on an...
The term “unfilmable” is tossed around a fair amount these days, in reference to stories told in other mediums (books, comics, video games, real life) that could not be adequately translated to the screen, and yet Hollywood keeps pushing the boundaries. Watchmen was unfilmable because of its meticulous detail and the flood of iconic images associated with it - but Zack Snyder went...
February 2012
2 posts
8 tags
Miniature Furnishings and People of the Female...
This is Lena Dunham:
Look at her, all searching and wise.
Lena Dunham graduated from Oberlin in 2008.
(Still from her 2007 short “Hooker on Campus”)
(This is from her Twitter profile picture, circa recently. If you have a twitter but don’t follow her we can’t be friends)
She is my new hero. I will be talking about her and her projects non-stop until at least...
4 tags
The OH in Ohio: Because Nothing Makes You Cum like...
The major complaint that I get about these review posts, other than that they are boisterously opinionated, lack sincerity, are void of technical critique, and generally suck is that they are too long. So I’m going to make this one as short as possible. Let us begin. This movie is set, and at least partially filmed, in Cleveland, Ohio. That means two things: 1) it will somehow find a way to...
December 2011
1 post
2 tags
SURFER, DUDE: Matthew McConaughey Smokes Weed,...
To be honest, my dear readers, I go out of my way to watch shitty movies. I go above and beyond the call of duty to watch bullshit films that no one would have any interest in seeing just to let you know that, in fact, you are justified in having no interest in seeing them. It is, without a doubt, the biggest waste of time that I attempt to make seem mildly pleasant in the face of realizing how...
November 2011
2 posts
10 tags
NETFLIX REVIEW: Blackthorn
This has to be the least adventurous adventure movie in recent memory, and it’s hard to really say why. All the right elements are in place—you’ve got cowboys, horse chases, gunfights in the desert, betrayal, plot twists, revenge, and mumbly southern drawls. But for some reason something about this movie isn’t working. Even though all the elements are in place, the...
3 tags
NETFLIX REVIEW: Barely Legal: Gratuitous Tits & A...
I just want to point out that I used “tits,” “grab,” and “feminism” all in the same sentence, up in that title up there. Please allow the twelve-year-old boy inside of your soul to roll on the floor with laughter while the adult, female part of you sheds a silent tear for the disrespect I just displayed toward your movement.
I wasn’t going to watch this movie. I actively did not want to see this...
October 2011
2 posts
1 tag
NETFLIX REVIEW: Ironclad
Ironclad is the better 300. Which isn’t to say it’s great, because, let’s all face it, badass as it was, 300 had a shit ton of problems. And, unfortunately, a lot of those problems carry over to Ironclad. The dumbing down of real-world history into a good-vs.-evil type struggle over 21st century American values, for example, combined with dialogue cornier than an...
8 tags
NETFLIX REVIEW: Meet Joe Black: It’s $5 in...
Recently a friend of mine gave me access to her Netflix account. This was generally awesome for a myriad of reasons: 1.) She was kind enough to allow me access to a word of unlimited movies for eight bucks a month, 2.) I don’t even have to pay the eight dollars a month, 3.) The friend who let me use her account is a fine, upstanding, educated Black woman, and those are hard to find. It’s like...
September 2011
1 post
3 tags
A Retrospective on the Ridiculousness of Kill Bill...
I would warn of spoilers, but considering there’s a Kill BIll volume 2, I think we all know how this movie ends, don’t we?
Kill Bill Volume 1, directed by Quentin Tarantino in 2003 and starring Uma Thurman, seems to be a sort of stylistic experiment. But how far can a movie go on style alone?
The plot of Kill Bill is so basic and simplistic that it’s frankly amazing that...
May 2011
2 posts
2 tags
Which Breath Will Be Your Last?: 'One Week'
What would you do if you found out you had Stage 4 cancer?
In Michael McGowan’s 2008 One Week, Ben Tyler (Joshua Jackson) decides to take a week-long trip westward from Toronto to Vancouver Island.
The film begins with the diagnosis. A doctor sits down and makes that familiar grimace that doctors make when they have bad news, and tells Ben that he has Stage 4 cancer, and that his odds of...
3 tags
Tricky, Tricky: 'The Quiet American'
I still can’t figure out if I’ve seen Philip Noyce’s 2002 version of The Quiet American before, or if the plot line was just so obvious to me that I predicted everything that happened. Either way, it’s still a good film — good, not great — and I do think that you should watch it if you have the chance. Then again, the only way to figure out if it’s your cup of tea is to read on.
The film opens...
April 2011
3 posts
2 tags
Still Pretty Racist: 'The Princess and the Frog'
In terms of great cinematic leaps forward, The Princess and the Frog is not one of the greatest. But at least Disney realized that African Americans can be heroes, too.
To be honest, The Princess and the Frog is pretty much your typical Disney story, but I’ll lay it out for you, anyway. The story begins in a fabulous New Orleans mansion, which belongs to the eminent and powerful Eli ‘Big Daddy’...
2 tags
An Anti-Musical?: 'A Woman Is a Woman'
Jean-Luc Godard’s 1961 award-winning A Woman Is A Woman is a very difficult film to talk about. The film itself is only 83 minutes — about the length of a Disney film — and follows such a strange format that I still cannot decide whether I liked it or not
(via heatherroseelizabeth)
A Woman Is a Woman has often been called an “anti-musical,” which makes a lot of sense. The film opens with a shot...
2 tags
Lights, Camera, Action: 'Citizen Kane'
It may be true that Orson Welles went downhill in his later years (see: his commercial for Japanese whiskey), but in his youth, he was a fabulous actor and director, as evidenced by his stunning directorial work and acting prowess in his 1941 film Citizen Kane.
The film opens with a rather spooky scene of the Kane castle (no, I kid you not) on his estate, Xanadu. The dying newspaper magnate,...
March 2011
3 posts
2 tags
Dull and Duller: 'The Weight of Water'
Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow’s 2000 film The Weight of Water, based on the novel of the same name by Anita Shreve, should really be renamed Sean Penn: Grease, Angst, and Pretension. Or perhaps Dissatisfied Housewives. Either title would do, really. The long and the short of it is: This was a very silly movie.
The film begins with German Louis Wagner (Ciarán Hinds) being hauled away by...
3 tags
Waiting for True Love's Kiss: 'Enchanted'
Kevin Lima’s 2007 film Enchanted starts out much like any other Disney movie. A beautiful young woman, Giselle (Amy Adams), who lives in a forest with all her cute little talking forest friends, awakens after a splendid dream in which she found her true love — who is a prince, of course!
True to Disney form, Giselle fashions a model prince out of odds and ends she has in the house and various...
4 tags
Oscars 2011 Recap
Our film blogger Carolyn Bick shares her of-the-moment thoughts from Sunday’s live broadcast of the 83rd Academy Awards…
(via Today)
Best Art Direction — Alice in Wonderland
Alice in Wonderland?? REALLY? What about the gorgeous set designs in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, or sepia-toned realism of True Grit? That’s ridiculous. Probably because it won’t win anything...
February 2011
2 posts
4 tags
It Is Actually A Romance?: 500 Days of Summer
(via Time Wisely)
Despite the hype when it first came out, director Marc Webb’s 500 Days of Summer may make you want to rip your eyes out. And possibly wish it had been a silly romance instead of a movie focused around one man-child’s obsession with a self-centered (unmentionable word).
The film begins un-chronologically, close to the end, with a scene of Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and...
4 tags
Love Hurts: 'Secretary'
Why, yes, James Spader. I would gladly go through the trash for you. And only eat four peas, a scoop of creamed potatoes, and as much ice cream as I’d like.
My love of James Spader aside, director Steven Shainberg’s 2002 Secretary is a fantastic kink-fest of a film. Starring Maggie Gyllenhaal as a shy, self-abusive young woman, and James Spader as a lawyer with an “interesting” sexual fetish,...
January 2011
1 post
4 tags
Bleakly Beautiful: 'The Ice Storm'
The first thing I thought when I saw The Ice Storm again in its entirety — for the first time in several years — was, It’s like The Big Chill gone bad. Pun intended.
The 1997 Ang Lee film, based on the novel by Rick Moody, takes place in the early ‘70s in suburban Connecticut. The film begins at the end: The first scene opens with a train that has been stopped, due to a terrible ice storm during...
December 2010
1 post
2 tags
Infinitely Better than the New TSA Regulations:...
Airplane! is one of those movies you watch when you’re a kid, and then come back to years later, and realize you didn’t really get all of the jokes. You just thought it was funny to watch a bald man with a funny way of speaking yell, “It’s a twister, it’s a twister!” while spinning in circles.
Airplane!, released in 1980, was a co-written and-directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry...
November 2010
3 posts
7 tags
Not Made for Kids: 'Harry Potter and the Deathly...
I have a few words for part one of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Not kid-friendly. At all.
The film begins where the book begins, albeit in a briefer manner. The obese Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia and their rotund son Dudley are vacating Privet Drive, leaving Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) behind to face Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) and his Dark Mark-ed minions alone. But despite...
1 tag
Reality through Animation: 'Grave of the...
Everybody loves a good cry now and then. But if you’re in the mood for more than a cry — think not being able to speak after the film is over — then Miyazaki Hayao’s Grave of the Fireflies is the best way to completely depress yourself in a little over an hour and a half.
The film, released in Japan in 1988, opens with the death of Seita, the adolescent protagonist. After weeks and weeks of...
3 tags
No Good Guys: 'Heathers'
I remember watching director Michael Lehmann’s 1989 teenage angst-hit Heathers for the first time when I was sixteen years old. While I understood even then that it was a great movie, I didn’t really understand what was going on. Not to mention I became extremely embarrassed at the strip croquet part.
In watching it again, I realized just how brilliant this movie actually is. Heathers is a...
October 2010
2 posts
2 tags
Easy A: Teen Movie with Substance?
The last thing I expected was for this movie to be good. I wasn’t even going to review it. I mean, let’s face it: It’s a flick geared towards teens, and it’s billed as a silly teen-angst-but-happy-ending-romance kind of thing.
So imagine my surprise when I actually ended up enjoying it. Sure, there were countless, obvious jokes cracked throughout, but there were also very witty ones — my...
4 tags
Race to Nowhere: Everybody Loses
We want our kids to shine in the workplace. We want them to lead debt-free lives, and be financially successful. So we push and push and push to ensure their future success.
But wait. How does this translate into happiness? Where does play enter into the picture? When does a kid just get to be…a kid?
Race To Nowhere, a documentary by director and mother Vicki Abeles, and director Jessica Congdon...
September 2010
4 posts
8 tags
The Social Network: Angry Geeks Making Money
What happens when you piss off a brilliant computer geek?
Facebook.
The Social Network, by director David Fincher, chronicles Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s (Jesse Eisenberg) rise and, uh, rise through the drama of a substantial lawsuit filed against him by two separate parties: His former best friend and Facebook co-founder, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), and three of Mark’s old Harvard...
6 tags
I Am Love: A Meaningful Feast
Going into director Luca Guadagnino’s 2009 film, I Am Love, I thought I was in for a good, sexy romp, complete with lots of delicious-looking food.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I Am Love is about far more than just sex and food. Sex and food simply serve as mediums for deeper messages about family, connections and one’s true self.
The film begins during the winter holiday season in Milan,...
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: Not So Awesome
This is a film column. So why, then, am I reviewing what is, for all intents and purposes, a two hour-long video game with a little bit of dialogue?
Based on the comic series by Bryan Lee O’Malley, director Edgar Wright’s film Scott Pilgrim vs. The World follows a 23-year-old Canadian named Scott Pilgrim. Scott, portrayed by the nerd’s nerd Michael Cera, is by no means remarkable—or “Awesome,”...
PREVIEW: Apollo Theatre Launches Five-Day Minifest
Starting on Friday, Sept. 17, the Apollo Theatre will host a five-day miniseries dedicated to hard-to-find movies, foreign-language films and musical performances. Here’s the breakdown for each of the features.
I Am Love: Sept. 17 at 4:30 p.m., Sept. 19 at 1:30 p.m., Sept. 20 at 7 p.m.
Directed by Luca Guadagnino, I Am Love is for sensuous gourmands and passionate lovers alike. The...
