recent product reviews
Gravity (2013)
Cuarón puts together something that is beautiful and incredibly tense. Might be the only movie I’ve seen with essentially a cast of two. Bullock delivers a refreshingly raw performance. And she looks great. After imagining that the role would have been good for Nathalie Portman, it was interesting to learn…
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Head in the Clouds (2004)
Unexpectedly epic in scale, with a great variety of sets and time periods and foreign countries represented. There’s some nostalgic magic in there, evoking the same feelings as Midnight in Paris. Nice cast, but the film would have been better served with a star in Guy’s role. A young Theron…
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Benny & Joon (1993)
Depp is superficially entertaining, but Chechik’s movie is pretty flat and boring overall. A tame date movie. Very 90’s, with the quirky-is-cool main characters, cheesy music, trendy dress, and perfect lighting in every scene. Lots of familiar faces. Oliver Platt was in everything.
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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Iconic actors playing iconic roles. Redford’s pretty cool. Newman’s a good-looking guy, but he mumbles. But as anti-heroes, they’re are not very redeeming, making us unsympathetic observers. In the Bonnie and Clyde-like final scene, there’s certainly no sympathy for them. The story is quite slow and filled with awkwardness and…
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Never Say Never Again (1983)
Kind of silly, with the usual Bond schlock and cheesy fight scenes. Returning to the role after an absence of 12 years, Connery’s getting old at this point, though they sort of address this in the plot. It works. I think a movie showing Bond’s retirement would be cool. Maybe…
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Stakeout (1987)
Nothing special. Standard fare for the late 80’s. Dreyfuss is always fun. Stowe’s not bad in her debut.
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Elysium (2013)
Blomkamp’s a visionary and a true talent with special effects. He proved that in District 9 and proved it again here with a much bigger budget. The story’s good but runs a bit long. Why did the code messenger have to die? Was Carlyle, the original carrier of the message,…
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Paradise Alley (1978)
Were all movies from the late 70’s boring and unfunny as a rule? A lame effort to reproduce some of Stallone’s magic with Rocky. Stallone does OK. He’s quite a chatterbox in this one and really belts out the opening theme. Lee Canalito looks like a young Brando.
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Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
The usual Bond schlock, though this one is sillier than most. Some very awkward writing for a couple of gay characters. The convoluted plot is pretty damn boring. Goofy humor, dated effects in the intro sequence, and some really bad dubbing typical of movies in the period. Amazing that it…
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Dredd (2012)
Gloriously violent, a great shoot-em-up movie. The action is action is visually good, though cheapened by constant ambient techno music. Effects, especially the slo-mo, are great. Urban’s pretty good, and he sounds just like Clint Eastwood. But the character’s a little robotic, and like Bane in The Dark Knight Rises,…
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I'm a photographer, web developer, travel enthusiast, and movie buff living in Alexandria, Virginia, USA.In the summer of 1993, I started writing reviews for every movie I saw and haven't looked back. I'm up to 2,371 reviews now. This makes me cool or a complete dork, depending on your perspective.
Some of these reviews contain spoilers, so if that bothers you, don't read!
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