Simple Tricks and Nonsense

I've been saying all along that the only thing I really wanted from this movie was to see some old friends and find out what they've been up to for the last 20 years. It's not that I had low expectations, exactly; I like to think that I had realistic expectations. I wasn't looking for a transcendent experience, or a return to the happy days of childhood, as I was with the Star Wars prequels. I knew going into Crystal Skull that it wasn't going to be the second coming of Raiders or even of Temple or Last Crusade; basically, I just hoped the flick wouldn't be an embarrassing disaster.

After seeing it twice, I am happy to say that it was not a disaster. What it was, exactly, I'm still trying to figure out, so forgive me if the following is something of a ramble.

There are spoilers below the fold, so be careful if you somehow still don't what this movie is about...

Continue reading "Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" »

Posted by at 5:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Okay, I know I recently made a rather harsh comment about the biggest movie of the summer so far (the remark, if you weren't paying attention, was "screw Iron Man), but of course I went to see it on opening weekend anyhow (along with, apparently, most everybody else in the country), and, as it turned out, it was a hell of a good way to kick off the summer season. If you happen to be one of the three or so people left who hasn't seen it yet, I highly recommend it.

Continue reading "Movie Review: Iron Man" »

Posted by at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The short version: The fifth Highlander feature film, recently released directly to DVD, wasn't as bad as I expected.

It was worse.

Much, much, much worse.

It was worse than either Star Trek V or Highlander 2, long the benchmarks for movie sequel suckage.

It was so bad it left The Girlfriend curled into a fetal ball, whimpering inconsolably.

It was so abysmally, eye-gougingly, soul-grindingly bad, in fact, that this fanboy is now finished with the whole god-forsaken franchise, at least as far as new Highlander product goes. I'm not quite incensed enough to disavow the original movie and the TV series, both of which I still enjoy, but in the highly unlikely event any further Highlander movies get made, I won't be wasting any more of my precious, limited, mortal lifespan on them. Because when it comes right down to it, I'm just not that masochistic.

The long version follows, if you're interested in reading any more of my rantings on this subject, but I think the important point has been made...

Continue reading "DVD Review: Highlander: The Source" »

Posted by at 12:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I've mentioned before that I'm fascinated by the life of Howard Hughes, the billionaire aviator, movie producer, Lothario, and eventual recluse and nutcase. There are many chapters in Howard's life story that are worth considering, but one of the most interesting to me personally is the epilogue that comes after his death, the tale of Melvin Dummar and the so-called "Mormon Will."

Continue reading "Melvin and Howard" »

Posted by at 6:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I watched a movie on DVD last night that I've heard about for years but somehow never gotten around to seeing, an odd little flick directed by Walter Hill called Streets of Fire.

Subtitled "A Rock & Roll Fable," Streets of Fire seems to have been deliberately designed to become a cult classic. The plot is basic and more than a little silly: an evil motorcycle gang kidnaps a beautiful young singer; her former boyfriend and miscellaneous sidekicks venture into hostile territory to rescue her; and then they all fight their way back out and prepare for a big confrontation with the gang's leader. The dialogue is utilitarian at best and the performances so uniformly stiff that I can only assume everyone was directed to act as woodenly as possible. (I blame the direction because we have plenty of evidence from other films that this cast -- which includes a very young Willem Dafoe, Amy Madigan, and the ultra-yummy Diane Lane -- really can, you know, act.) What makes Streets of Fire at all noteworthy is the film's look: it's set in some weird parallel-universe urban environment where women wear shoulder pads and fingerless gloves like all the girIs I remember seeing from high school, but the men all look like they just stepped out of Rebel Without a Cause. Well, all except for the bad guys, who look less like the hard-ass outlaw bikers they're supposed to be than leatherboys from San Francisco's Castro District. The streets of this city-without-a-name are always dark and wet, smeared with reflected colors from the neon overhead, and all the cars are vintage. And of course, as the title promises, there are lots of pretty flames flickering behind the action. In short, the movie represents a total triumph of style over substance.

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing; as harsh as all of the above sounds, I really did enjoy the movie. It even helped me put my finger on something I've been thinking about for a while, and that's got to say something for its merits.

Continue reading "Streets of Fire: The Glamourous '80s" »

Posted by at 3:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Full disclosure: in one of my high-school yearbook photos, I am wearing an aquamarine t-shirt under a white cotton sport coat. I also had a poster of Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas on my bedroom wall for about five years. "You Belong to the City" was my personal theme song for a few months. I even eliminated BYU from my prospective colleges list after I learned that the school had a dress code which required young men to be clean-shaven and wear socks at all times. Yes, my friends, I was a fan of the old Miami Vice TV series. Still am, to be honest, and I'm not at all ashamed of it. Hey, I looked damn good in that aqua-colored shirt.

Knowing all that, not to mention my usual distaste for remakes, I'm sure you can imagine that I approached the new Miami Vice feature film with a great deal of trepidation.

Continue reading "Movie Review: Miami Vice" »

Posted by at 10:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I haven't been hip to the teen-movie genre since about the time Molly Ringwald started sending out college applications. By "teen movie," I don't mean the occasional sex farce like American Pie or nostalgic coming-of-age films that are obviously intended for adult viewers, such as Dazed and Confused or Almost Famous. No, when I say "teen movie," I'm talking about movies that are targeted squarely at the teenage demographic, which feature young actors that kids like but adults don't recognize, and which focus, by and large, on topics that only teenagers care about. In other words, movies like those the aforementioned Ms. Ringwald was making during her heyday -- and my own teenaged years -- back in the 1980s.

The Brat Pack and their patron writer/director John Hughes long ago receded into the pop-cultural rear-view, but I have noticed that films similar to theirs still come out every so often, usually on about a four-year cycle to coincide (or so I believe) with each new crop of high-school freshmen. But I haven't seen any of those more recent teen flicks myself. I've missed entire careers because I'm now too damn old to identify with the idealized romantic shenanigans of people young enough to be my own kids.

How, then, did I come to see the film John Tucker Must Die on Sunday afternoon instead of something more appropriate to my age and interests (like, say, Miami Vice)? Blame The Girlfriend, who hosted her thirteen-year-old niece over the weekend and enlisted my help in showing The Kid a good time.

Continue reading "Things I Learned from John Tucker" »

Posted by at 5:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

One last thought on Superman Returns, which will no doubt brand me once and for all as a nitpicker on the level of The Simpsons' Comic Book Guy:

I hated the new supersuit. The colors were too muted, especially the cape, the textured fabric was weird (reminded me of Aquaman's outfit, actually) and the big plastic S-shield on the chest just looked, well, like a big plastic shield.

I understand that it's hard to make something like tights and a cape look cool, or like something that someone would actually wear in the real world (reference the very funny line in X-Men about "yellow spandex"), but is a dingy wetsuit the best they could do?

Yes, I am a dork...

Posted by at 9:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Forgive me for continuing to blather on about the same subject, but I started thinking on the train home from work tonight and I realized that I've still got a lot to say about this particular movie. I hope you'll bear with me...

Continue reading "More Thoughts on Superman Returns" »

Posted by at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

First things first: Brandon Routh does not look like Christopher Reeve to me. For the past several weeks, I've heard all kinds of breathless gushing about how much the new kid looks like the late, great Superman of my youth, but I gotta tell you, I just don't see it. Yeah, he's tall and muscular like Chris was in his prime, and they share similar coloring... but aren't those prerequisites for the role? If anything, Routh reminds me of a young Timothy Dalton.

Continue reading "Movie Review: Superman Returns" »

Posted by at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don't care, I'm still free
You can't take the sky from me
Take me out to the black
Tell them I ain't comin' back
Burn the land and boil the sea
You can't take the sky from me
There's no place I can be
Since I found Serenity
But you can't take the sky from me...

--Opening theme from Firefly

Writer Joss Whedon reportedly pitched his television series Firefly as "the anti-Star Trek," so it's interesting to note that the show has followed a similar path as that classic series: unloved by network executives and cancelled before its time, Firefly, like Star Trek before it, spawned a fanatically loyal cult following that clamored for the show's return, which it did this weekend in the form of a Whedon-directed feature film, Serenity. The difference between Firefly and Star Trek, however, is that Trek ran three seasons in its original incarnation; it held a sizable presence in the collective pop-cultural memory even before years of syndication made it into a household name. Firefly, by contrast, lasted a mere ten episodes before it was canned, and only 14 episodes were actually filmed.

Think about that. Most series that fail to run a complete season (usually 22 episodes these days) vanish without a trace, quickly forgotten by a fickle viewing public. But this show, which didn't even make it half a season, somehow garnered enough attention after its death to come back on the Big Screen. Even if you don't give a womp-rat's exhaust port about cultish science-fiction media properties, that's got to impress you because it's so mind-bogglingly unlikely.

Continue reading "Movie Review: Serenity" »

Posted by at 6:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Ed. note: Sorry it's taken me so long to post my thoughts on ROTS, but like I said in a comment for an earlier entry, this movie is a big deal for me and it's taken a while to absorb and process it. Given that it's been out for a week and the box office returns for last weekend were flat-out astounding, I'm going to assume that half the planet's population has already seen it. If, however, you are one of the handful of folks who didn't come down with "Jedi flu" last week, be warned that this entry contains more spoilers than my usual movie reviews. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it can't be helped in this particular case.]

I finally got to see my long-imagined lava-pit duel as well as the planet of the Wookiees (although the latter amounted to little more than a teasing glimpse). By themselves, these bits of fanboy wish fulfilment would probably be enough to earn Revenge of the Sith my personal thumbs-up. But as it turns out, the sixth and final Star Wars movie gave me a lot of other reasons to like it, too. It was, in fact, everything I was hoping for, a redemptive finish to the generally lackluster prequel trilogy and a successful, plausible bridge into the "next generation story" told in the original trilogy.

That's not to say that Sith was a perfect movie, or even a perfect Star Wars movie. But I thought it was a surprisingly good movie, and, for me at least, a completely satisfying one.

Continue reading "Movie Review: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" »

Posted by at 3:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

It's tough to explain The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to someone who's doesn't already know of it, in part because it's been so many different things over the years. It began as a British radio serial, way back in the late 1970s. The radio show led to a novel, which begat several sequels, and there was also a BBC TV series and an early text-based computer game that I understand is still rather popular in certain circles. (You can probably find a playable version of it out there on the InterWeb Thingie, if you're curious.) And now, of course, it's also a big-budget feature film spectacle.

Continue reading "Movie Review: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" »

Posted by at 1:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Over the weekend, I had the frustrating experience of seeing two movies based on books I've loved for years, both of which completely failed to capture what I find so appealing about those books. The first of these was Sahara, which, as the opening titles kindly point out to anyone who didn't know, is "A Clive Cussler Dirk Pitt Adventure."

If that means nothing to you, I'll explain: Dirk Pitt is a character created by an author named Clive Cussler in a series of best-selling novels that read like a combination of Indiana Jones and James Bond, with a smidgeon of Jacques Cousteau thrown in for flavor. These novels don't begin to qualify as good literature, but they are good reads -- they're fun, exciting page-turners that are perfect for lazy summer afternoons and long airplane rides. I first discovered them when I was in my early teens, and I've loved them ever since. I'm not at all ashamed to admit that Dirk Pitt was a hero of mine as I was growing up, and, like a lot of people who have favorite literary characters, I have a very definite image in my head of who and what he is.

That's why I decided weeks ago that I wasn't going to bother seeing Sahara. As I explained in an earlier entry, I had grave misgivings about the casting of the terminally bland Matthew McConaughey as Dirk, and I figured it would be best to spare myself (and my unfortunate friends and readers) the aggravation of seeing one of my heroes brought to life badly.

Fate, however, had other plans, and when my foursome couldn't get into The Interpreter on Saturday night, I was outvoted on which film got to be our second choice. Anne braced herself for my inevitible post-movie tirade, while our friends Jack and Natalie both tried to convince me I should lay aside my preconceptions. None of them will believe this, but I honestly did try to judge the movie on its own merits and not compare it to the books I've known since puberty.

Continue reading "Movie Review: Sahara" »

Posted by at 12:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

It's been a while since I posted a film review here on the ol' Web site. I got out of the habit when politics consumed me last fall, and I haven't seen anything in the months since that was especially blog-worthy. Oh, I've seen some good films, but nothing that really stood out from the crowd, that worked me up, made me think, or inspired me to write. Nothing, that is, until Sin City...

Continue reading "Movie Review: Sin City" »

Posted by at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Just in case you're assembling a dossier on Anne and myself, we are in the habit of going to movies on Sunday afternoons. Our reasons for going then are pretty obvious, when you think about them: Sunday is the most unscheduled part of our average week, the theaters are rarely crowded on that day (we do live in church-going Utah, after all), and the matinee prices are easy on the checkbook. Generally, we like to make a nice, relaxing day of it by going out for brunch, possibly doing a bit of shopping, then catching a show in the 2-3 o'clock range. By Sunday evening we're headed for home and I usually have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to say on this blog about whatever we saw (even if I don't actually get around to saying it for several weeks, as in the cases of Collateral and Sky Captain).

Sunday afternoon this week followed our usual pattern: breakfast at Denny's, a quick run through Costco for bulk groceries and the latest DVDs, and then a movie. But this week the process stalled out at this stage. The words for the blog failed to come that evening and even now, 48 hours later, I'm still not sure what to say about a weird little film called Napoleon Dynamite.

Continue reading "Movie Review: Napoleon Dynamite" »

Posted by at 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

The recent Tom Cruise/Jamie Foxx vehicle Collateral looks and feels very much like an episode of the old Miami Vice TV series. That's not surprising, considering the film was directed by Michael Mann, who executive produced Vice and is widely credited for giving that series its striking visual style. It's also not a flaw, in my estimation, because Vice is one of my all-time favorite TV shows (I'm eagerly awaiting the DVD release of the first season in January). In many ways, the show was a conventional "buddy-cop" police procedural, but the scripts often displayed a lot more meat than I think most people remember today, and certainly more than was common to most '80s cop shows. There was also an appealing undercurrent of weirdness in Vice, a sense that this seemingly mundane story of cops vs. drug dealers could spin off into The Twilight Zone at any moment, and I believe that the times when this current was allowed to surface directly influenced the most popular crime shows currently running on TV, the assorted C.S.I. properties, which traffic in weirdness all the time.

Continue reading "Movie Review: Collateral" »

Posted by at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Although I grew up during the 1970s and '80s, it sometimes seems as if I spent more time in the '30s and '40s. No, I didn't have a time machine in my closet, nor am I the sort that claims to have recovered memories of past life experiences (although I do have an unusually healthy sense of deja vu sometimes...) What I mean is that during my childhood, through some quirk of timing and the cyclical nature of popular culture, I was often immersed in stories and forms of media that had first entertained my grandparents.

Continue reading "Movie Review: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" »

Posted by at 3:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

[Ed. note: I've been pretty lax about the movie reviews lately, so I'm going to try and make up for lost time over the next few entries. FYI, I'll be talking about films I've seen over the course of the last month. I mention this only because I don't want you to think I've spent the last three days sitting in a darkened theater. Not that that's a bad way to spend one's time, of course...]

I must be honest before beginning this review: prior to Shaun of the Dead, I'd only seen one other zombie movie in my whole life, namely the seminal Night of the Living Dead. I suppose you could count Sam Raimi's delirious Evil Dead trilogy, which has certain similarities to "traditional" zombie flicks, but if you're rigidly defining the genre as "armies of shuffling corpses moaning for 'braaaaaaaiiiiiiinnnnnnsssssssss' and getting shot in the head," well, then, there's only ever been the one. Nevertheless, I feel quite secure in proclaiming Shaun to be, as The Simpsons' Comic Book Guy would say, the best zombie movie... EVER! Certainly it's the funniest film I've seen in a good long time. And, in an odd way, it's the most touching, too.

Continue reading "Movie Review: Shaun of the Dead" »

Posted by at 4:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Up to now, I haven't had much interest in seeing the film that earned Michael Moore the ever-lasting enmity of political conservatives, namely his anti-Bush polemic Fahrenheit 9/11. I figured there was little point, since my opinions of the incumbent president and his administration are already well-developed and, I believe, well-informed. I had a pretty good idea of what charges Moore would level against Bush in this film, and they're all issues I've learned about through other sources, so I didn't need to see F9/11 for educational purposes. Nor did I need the film to stir up my political passions, because the daily headlines are usually sufficient for that. Finally, there was the deterrant effect produced by Moore himself. If he was a typical documentarian who stayed safely behind the camera, there wouldn't be a problem in that regard, but one of the valid criticisms of Moore is that he likes to take center-stage in his films. In short, it often seems that Michael Moore's movies are less about the subject matter than they are about Michael Moore.

However, after thinking and writing so much about the UVSC controversy over the past few days, my curiosity was aroused. And so, with Anne away on her Church history tour and nothing better to do on a fine early-autumn Saturday, I decided to go ahead and have a look at what it is that has everyone's panties in a bunch.

Continue reading "Movie Review: Fahrenheit 9/11, Plus a Couple of Vital Links" »

Posted by at 10:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

As I mentioned in my review of Spider-Man 2, I like comic books. I've been reading them fairly consistently throughout my life, with the exception of a few years in my mid- to late teens when I thought I was too grown-up for such things. (Ironic, since the teen years seem to be the time of life when most comic fans are most heavily involved in the scene, but then I've always tended to be out of synch with whatever my peers are doing.)

My interest in the medium was rekindled while I was a student at the University of Utah. It happened almost by chance: I was passing through the Student Union one afternoon when I spotted another student setting up a table in the large open area between the video arcade and the food court. People were always selling items there of one sort or another, and sometimes those wares were actually kind of interesting, so I stopped to see what the guy had to offer. It turned out that he was a comics fan who'd decided to liquidate part of his collection. I wasn't too interested -- I figured comics were something I'd put behind me long ago -- but one title caught my eye before I could walk away: Aliens vs. Predator.

Continue reading "Movie Review: Alien Vs. Predator" »

Posted by at 7:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

One of the more lamentable cinematic fads of the last few years has been the use of the "Shaky-Cam," that unstabilized, handheld camera perspective that looks like what you could expect if you turned over your Super8 to a caffeine-buzzed four-year-old. When used sparingly, this technique can provide a sense of immediacy, a "you-are-there" feeling. The problem is that many modern (and presumably younger) filmmakers are too enamored of the device. Basically, they use it too much, even in situations when it simply isn't necessary, no doubt because they think that having the picture jerk and weave like a punch-drunk boxer will give their project that all-important "edge" that appeals to the skateboard-and-Xbox crowd. Combine the shaky-cam with the curious reluctance of modern directors to shoot anything from a distance -- I have a theory that everything is shot these days with the eventual DVD release in mind, so directors don't want their actors to look too small on a television screen -- as well as the hyperkinetic, post-MTV editing style that requires a jump-cut every two seconds, and you end up with quite a mess. You end up, in fact, with The Bourne Supremacy.

Continue reading "Movie Review: The Bourne Supremacy" »

Posted by at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

As I demonstrated recently, my knowledge of so-called higher culture is pretty shaky. I'm especially ignorant when it comes to music, at least of the pre-rock 'n' roll variety. To me, "The Great American Songbook" and "Tin Pan Alley" are vaguely understood terms at best, and up until a couple of weeks ago the only Cole Porter tune I could name was "Anything Goes," and that's only because I've seen the opening credits of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom so many times.

But then I saw De-Lovely, an unconventional biographical picture about Porter, and I realized that I do, in fact, know quite a few of the popular songs from the first half of the 20th Century. I've heard them for years in movies both new and old, and I think it's fair to say that they are woven into the fabric of our cultural consciousness; in other words, everybody knows these songs, even if their origins are cloudy these days. (I'm personally quite fond of "Begin the Beguine," which I knew from the film The Rocketeer, and from a CD collection of Big Band music I picked up a few years ago, but I never realized it had been written by Porter.) De-Lovely is filled with Porter's music, performed by modern-day singers such as Sheryl Crow, Elvis Costello, Alanis Morisette, and others whose faces I recognize but whose names I escape me. The film actually is a sort of musical, although the songs are used more to punctuate a given scene's emotional impact than to drive the action or reveal information, as they do in a more traditional musical. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Continue reading "Movie Review: De-Lovely" »

Posted by at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

[Ed. note: Fair warning: this entry is a long one, and it involves a fair amount of rambling. I'll eventually get to Spidey 2, but it's going to take a while, so please bear with me. Or don't. After all, it's your surfing time. Who am I to tell you how to spend your time?]

There are four things you should know about me before I voice my opinions on the summer's biggest film so far, Spider-Man 2:

I like comic books about superheroes.

I like movies based on comic books about superheroes.

I've seen most of the major films based on comics about superheroes.

And for my money, the best comic-book superhero movie ever made is the 1978 version of Superman.

Continue reading "Movie Review: Spider-Man 2" »

Posted by at 9:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I realized as I was writing the previous entry that I haven't posted any film reviews in a while, even though they are supposed to be one of the mainstays of Simple Tricks and Nonsense. There are several explanations, not least of which is my tendency to procrastinate, in addition to my equally pernicious capacity for distraction. (That's a fancy way of saying that I always intend to write a review when I see a movie, but I'm too tired the day I actually see it, so I figure I'll write about it the next day. But then when tomorrow comes some new topic smacks me in the forehead and I go for it like a cat following a laser pointer, and the next thing I know it's been a month since I saw that one flick I was going to write about and, oh hell, I really need to catch up, and... Well, that's probably more than you really wanted to know about my thought processes. Let's just stick with, "I put things off and I'm easily distracted.")

Continue reading "Review-a-Rama: Troy, The Terminal, Shrek 2, The Stepford Wives" »

Posted by at 11:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm going to be honest here: the only reason I was remotely interested in seeing this week's flick -- which was advertised essentially as a remake of a film I consider to be a minor classic, namely Penny Marshall's directorial debut, Big -- is because the film's star, Jennifer Garner, is so damn adorable. Don't laugh; a lot of people base their viewing choices on the attractiveness of the cast. At least I'm honest about occasionally suffering through a less-than-impressive movie because I think the female lead is cute. Even some of the professional critics are prone to this behavior. For example, hop on over to Roger Ebert's site and run a search for Neve Campbell. You'll soon see that ol' Rog has a crush on the Scream cutie and he's not shy about admitting it.

Anyhow, getting back to my point, I went to see 13 Going on 30 because Jennifer Garner is cute, and because my usual viewing companion wanted to see it and I figured that I owed her after exposing her to the 70s cheesefest that is Battlestar Galactica the other night (yeah, I know it was an awful show, but I love the silly thing; at least I'm not into WWF. And if you're curious for some depraved reason of your own, the episode Anne and I watched together was "Lost Planet of the Gods"). To my great surprise, the movie was neither a rip-off of Big -- at least not much of one -- nor was it a bad film. I quite liked it actually. But it is definitely a case of something that's becoming all-too-common these days: the disconnect between how a movie is marketed and what it actually is.

Continue reading "Movie Review: 13 Going on 30" »

Posted by at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm probably about to lose whatever street cred I may have had as an intellectual observer of movies, but I simply can't carry on the charade any longer: I don't get Charlie Kaufman.

Continue reading "Movie Review: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" »

Posted by at 2:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How often does this happen: you go to a movie and find that the characters are uninteresting, two-dimensional puppets that you don't remotely care about, and the only justification you can find for the seven bucks you dropped at the box office -- not to mention the additional fifteen you spent on snacks -- is that the film is filled with amazing visual effects and ingenious new ways to damage property. All the time, right?

So how often does the exact opposite occur? I'm talking about seeing a movie in which you really like the characters and the basic premise, but the movie itself feels disappointingly short on spectacle. That's a much rarer animal, even a bit of a paradox, and yet, such movies do exist. Case-in-point: Hellboy, a new film based on the comic book created in 1994 by Mike Mignola.

Continue reading "Movie Review: Hellboy" »

Posted by at 7:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Best-selling writer Mort Rainey has problems. Six months ago, he found his wife in bed with another man. Since then, he's been shuffling around their small-town vacation cabin in a ratty bathrobe, living on peanut butter and Doritos, sleeping away half the day, and trying desperately to get over the writer's block that has him stuck on the first paragraph of his new story (sounds like the way I pass my time!). As if all that isn't enough, now he's got the scariest Southerner seen on film since Deliverance standing on his porch, insisting that Rainey stole his story and must make it right. So begins the latest film based on the writings of Stephen King...

Continue reading "Movie Review: Secret Window" »

Posted by at 9:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lately I've been putting my library card to use and tracking down some older films for which I either don't want to risk a blind purchase or can't find anywhere else. Most of these are well-known titles that I've just never gotten around to seeing before – for instance, I recently watched Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity, a nifty noir thriller with Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and more cigarettes than you've ever seen outside of a hijacked Winston truck. That was definitely a good choice. Unfortunately, however, I sometimes end up with something a bit more… regrettable.

Continue reading "Video Review: Conquest of Space" »

Posted by at 7:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The sharp-eyed reader of Simple Tricks will no doubt notice that today's entry isn't what I promised was coming. What can I say? I'm easily distracted...

Have no fear. That discussion of my all-time favorite films is still on the way, hopefully by the end of the week. For today, however, I'd like to offer up my thoughts on The Cooler, an independent film currently running at Salt Lake's Broadway Theater.

Continue reading "Movie Review: The Cooler" »

Posted by at 12:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)