etragedy (Level 13)

Long time readers of my reviews know that I am not exactly what one would call a Francophile when it comes to cinema. Yet here I am, once again, attempting to appreciate one of the critically-acclaimed 'best dramas' France had to offer in the 1990s.   Un Coer en Hiver (literally ...

As you can tell by the title of this review, Don Juan DeMarco is nothing if not corny. The premise, a young man held in a psychiatric ward who believes he is the legendary lover Don Juan, speaks for itself.What makes the film an enjoyable lark, rather than an intolerable ...

If you read my review for The Brain that Wouldn't Die, you know I have a soft spot for bad movies. Not Adam Sandler bad. Not bad as in so boring they put you to sleep. I mean bad in that way that is oh so good. The kind you ...

When most people think of anime they think of giant robots and cat girls; and there's a place for that. But anime is not a genre, anime is a medium for storytelling. One of the greatest anime films ever produced, 5 Centimeters Per Second has no fantasy elements whatsoever. It ...

It's an interesting story - a woman and her daughter, fated to walk the earth bringing chocolate to the people - and it would have ended there if not for the fact that it features a best-of-the-best cast including Alfred Molina, Judi Dench, Carrie Ann Moss, Johnny Depp, Juliette Binoche ...

Ted has a pretty deeply divided audience. Some people found it hilariously funny while others found it to be lacking. A quick perusal of the reviews on sites like Rottentomatoes and imdb reveal that a lot of the low reviews say "I expected more" or that they were "disappointed". I ...

The Help is about Skeeter, an aspiring writer in 1960s who was raised by a black maid that disappeared one day. This inspires her to write a book based on the stories of the other maids in town. When Harper Row publishers show interest in the idea Skeeter and her ...

Four years after Disney's Treasure Island, came this sequel in which Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins return to Treasure Island in search of more treasure; not to be confused with Return to Treasure Island, an inferior knock-off that came out the same year.The sequel opens several years later with ...

Once you discount the entire Eroll Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks oeuvres, there have been like about two good pirate movies ever made, both by Disney.Despite its dumbed-down Disneyification, the 1950 adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, is pretty good. Yes, it looks a bit 'stagey', filled with hammy acting ...

Most kids movies maintain a pretty superficial emotional level. Especially fantasy films. The closest kids film to Where the Wild Things Are is probably The Never Ending Story. That film has a young boy retreating to a fantasy world to deal with grief. This film also has a young boy ...

This is an awesome B-movie. Which is not to say it isn't bad - a lot of good B-movies are bad movies - but there are two kinds of bad movies. Movies that are boring and movies that are cheesy. The Brain That Wouldn't Die may be cheesy, but it's ...

Black Lightning is perhaps the best Russian superhero movie to date! O.K., it's the only Russian superhero movie to date - but that doesn't diminish it's value as a fun action romp. Set on New Year's Eve 2009, it's actually more in the vein of 80s style sci-fi films like ...

In the 70s, science fiction films were pretty good, they had real stories to tell, be it Rollerball, Planet of the Apes or Soylent Green. The one thing they were missing was decent special effects. That all changed in 1977 with the release of both Close Encounters of the Third ...

After 50 years, The House is Black still comes up whenever the question of what is the greatest Iranian film of all time comes up. The film is actually not even a feature - clocking in at just 22 minutes, but is often considered alongside other features, rather than short ...

Little Big Man is a great sprawling epic of the American West in the tradition of How the West Was Won, but it’s also one of the first ‘modern’ Westerns to treat Native American culture with respect. In some ways it greatly resembles, and no doubt influenced, more recent filmed ...