Here there be spoilers In Star Trek, J.J. Abrams has sliced through a galaxy-sized pop-culture gordian knot not with the frenzied hacking of a desperate man but with the grace of a samurai. Ok, that’s probably overstating things, but it is nonetheless true that Abrams re-booting of the Star Trek franchise provides a solid foundation …
Category Archives: Film Journal
Watched the Watchmen
Just got back from midnight showing of The Watchmen. First thoughts: Warning: possible spoilers It didn’t suck. Even in the graphic novel a certain distracting piece of anatomy was implied but not shown. They really should have gone with that approach. Lesson: Even the smartest people in the world need to read their Shelley. There …
Review: The Strangers
Saying that Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers breaks no new ground in the horror genre shouldn’t be construed as an entirely negative thing, for it is a very well-made horror flick. The film is often restrained, and, in sharp contrast to the currently fashionable torture porn direction most contemporary horror films take, doesn’t show us much …
2007 Favorite Media
Living out on the edge of nowhere, we don’t really get much in the way of film that isn’t mainstream, so in addition to missing many of the great films everyone’s talking about, I don’t see many films either. Therefore, my list of 2007 favorites isn’t limited to films of 2007, nor is it limited …
My Top “10″ List of 2006
Sherry and I vascillate between describing Tiffin as “in the middle of nowhere” and “on the edge of no-where.” In either case, our location means that we miss out on many quality film releases each year since the nearest “art house” is two hours away. Also, as noted elsewhere, 2006 was a rough year for …
Kon Tiki
Before my sophmore year of high school, I was set a list of books that I had to read over the summer. I was pretty excited when I read the dust jacket of Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki. I had already been bitten by the sea story bug, and what better adventure could there be than …
Nightmare Before Christmas 3D
Boys and girls of every age Wouldn’t you like to see something strange? One can only imagine what the wonks at Disney thought when Tim Burton showed up with the idea for A Nightmare Before Christmas. Whatever their initial thoughts, I, for one, am glad that they realized not only how much money they could …
The Luzhin Defence (2001)
I understand why Peter Jackson would make a derivitively original film and slap a Lord of the Rings label on it: sadly, Tolkien has a huge fanbase that will slurp up whatever swill you put in front of it. What I don’t understand is why Marleen Gorris and Peter Berry would use the same strategy …
Summer Movie Digest
School has now started, and we’re headed smack dab into Labor Day, so I guess it’s safe to say that summer is over, regardless of what the equinoxes (equinoxi?) have to say about it. I began the season with a firm determination to write full-scale reviews of all the movies I saw this summer, but …
The Kingdom: Series 1
Last year sometime we rented Kingdom Hospital, Stephen King’s adaptation of Lars von Trier’s made-for-Dutch-television series Riget. The American version was had a kind of quirky Tales from the Crypt meets Chicago Hope-musical sensibility that, while interesting, did wear a bit. We’re still not quite sure what the giant ant-eater was all about. Having now …
