Review: THE DESCENDANTS

This is my favorite of all of George Clooney's characters. In The Descendants, Clooney is not awesome. He is not a badass. He doesn't have a charming smile (mostly because I don't think he smiles once in this movie). In The Descendants, George Clooney plays a character. And for The Descendants, he deserves an Oscar.

Review: THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN

Steven Spielberg was born to direct animation. He's easily one of the most cinematically creative people of all time, and The Adventures of Tintin is mind-blowing showcase of what movies would look like if Spielberg was not limited to the restrictions of live-action. The Adventures of Tintin is, if nothing else, Steven Spielberg without limits.

Review: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL

The first thing I will point out in my comments about the newest installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise is that the above image is not green-screened. Tom Cruise really did this.

SO THAT'S COOL I GUESS.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is easily the best installment of the franchise and I find it hard to believe any upcoming sequels will top it. Brad Bird - one of my all-time favorite filmmakers - has revived a franchise I would have considered dead with an excellent action movie that I would never have expected to enjoy as much as I did.

Review: EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE

I knew a guy with much more intense Asperger's Syndrome than the hero of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, and he was nowhere near as mean-spirited and horrible as this kid. The guy I knew was one of the most genuine people I ever met. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close uses this character in a failing experiment for the two hours that it runs. This is a movie that wants us to feel much more than we are given.

Review: YOUNG ADULT

I like Jason Reitman's movies because he tell stories about people. He has never opted to tell great war stories or period pieces, but instead paints a picture of a quirky individual. This is refreshing, interesting, and relatable every single time. Young Adult is no exception. Reitman, once again collaborating with former stripper/Academy Award-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody, has pumped out another hit to stand alongside Thank You For Smoking, Juno, and Up in the Air.

Review: THE MUPPETS

Sometimes, movies are just done right. Everything about this movie is done right. The casting is right. The music is right. The story is right, and the heart is right. The Muppets is just right.

The Dark Knight Rises: An Ominous Disappointment

Here: TDKR trailer

Okay. I’m saying it now. We got some problems.

Years ago, as a big fan of “Batman Begins,” I had to stem my excitement for “The Dark Knight.” I had to keep my expectations low, even though after the teaser and trailer, I knew that TDK was going to be something special. It was actually exhausting to not get carried away. And afterwards? I wanted no more sequels. I felt Nolan’s Batman had run its phenomenal course and that the two films balanced each other just fine. Adding a third film would be gratuitous or, at best, an imbalance. This was like Terminator, not Star Wars. Two can be better than three.

Ad Classics: SIMON MCQOID LONG LIVE PLAY, PLAYSTATION 3

             The most interesting part about the latest Playstation advertising campaign was that the original ad said absolutely nothing besides "join the gathering".  However, the pay off in the longer version released a few months afterwards had a great insight to the stories found in videogames; it is YOU the player who is the hero of the story. And the characters here celebrate that exactly. We wish the film industry would celebrate its audience in the same manner.

           The ad itself is incredibly effective piece of storytelling. So far we have been posing ads by great filmmakers. This ad was done by a new-comer, but like every story it has to come from somewhere. Enjoy:

PULGASARI: True Escapism

In honor (?) of the passing of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, I would like to present the greatest story ever stolen, er, kidnapped. (written 8/8/11)

Review: NEW YEAR'S EVE

The Time’s Square Ball Drop on New Year’s Eve is perhaps to be the most anticlimactic event all year. Thousands of people gather on Time’s Square, many more watch on their TV’s across several time zones (a rather lame thing to be doing on New Year’s Eve in my opinion, go find a party somewhere please), as a medium size ball of light is lowered towards a screen where a Panasonic ad is displayed. The whole thing takes about a minute; and there are no fireworks at the end. So if the last wish of a dying old man (Robert DeNiro) is to see the ball drop one more time from the rooftop of the hospital, I suspect he led a rather boring life.

Review: ANOTHER EARTH

Another Earth presents an interesting experiment; a second Earth suddenly appears in the sky. The mysterious planet is actually another copy of Earth, perhaps one in another universe. Why it suddenly became visible is left unexplained. However for a movie called Another Earth this film has very little to do with this said other Earth and more to do with what this second Earth means to a few individuals in our Earth. No surprise that a second Earth means a second chance to the protagonist Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling).

Review: HUGO

So, Scorsese decided to direct a kid’s movie… when I first saw the trailer for Hugo I wasn’t quite sure what to think of this fact. It looked like a Spielberg movie, a big budget, techno-family epic, and in 3D!!! What was Marty, the Gangster Priest, the King of Gritty, the man with more four-letter words in his movies than an entire season of South Park combined doing? Was he back on coke perhaps? Amazingly the result was a film very different from any of his previous films, and yet very much like them at the same time; this is not a children’s movie by Scorsese but a Scorsese movie for children.

Review: J. EDGAR

I never quite understood why those protesters a month back were occupying Wall Street. Wall Street, as a symbol, is a carnivorous monster bent on hoarding money--the most quantitative element of hedonism. Wall Street failed nobody anymore than a shark fails swimmers by taking a bite out of them. We don’t blame sharks though; we blame the lifeguards.