Fantastic Mr. Fox Get it now!

I watched a DVD rental of this movie three evenings in a row and enjoyed the show immensely each time. What a charming production. I strongly recommend this movie to adults.Get more detail about Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Man on Wire Buy Now

Man on Wire (James Marsh, 2008)

I've been reading commentary about Man on Wire in the weeks since I watched it, and what most surprises me is the number of people who don't get it. It seems obvious to me, because it's a very basic thing; unlike most documentaries, which make no apology for being documentaries, Man on Wire is structured like a suspense film. It's a documentary that doesn't play like a documentary, and there seems to be no recognition of this among those who don't get it. (Of course, that may mean Marsh did his job all too well; the people who don't get it may have actually thought they were watching a suspense film, in which case, it is awfully slow.) If they do get it, and still don't like the movie, well, more power to them. I can understand that. It just depresses me when something so different is treated like something that's the same.

Man on Wire is the story of French tightrope walker Phillipe Petit's greatest achievement: tightrope walking between the still-under-construction Twin Towers in the early 1970s. For some reason, I always assumed that this had been sanctioned, so I was fascinated by the planning it took to do all this (a good chunk of the middle third of the movie reminded me of a number of bank heist films I've seen over the years). Necessarily, a lot of the description of how the thing was pulled off required a lot of re-enactment, and I've read where that turned some people off. But really, did you want even more head shots of people sitting around and talking? We already got a lot of those. Besides, there's a studied (and, I'm sure, conscious) cheesiness to the re-enactment scenes that put me in mind of Spike Jonze's video for the Beastie Boys song "Sabotage", and that can never be a bad thing. Fake mustaches!

No, it isn't an actual suspense film. It's still a movie that's going to go at the speed of documentary (and I mean actual documentary here, rather than the recent flood of "agitprop masquerading as documentary", viz. Michael Moore or The Company or other such silliness). And yet it doesn't feel quite right to call it "documentary" in the same vein as something like Winged Migration or Hoop Dreams. If Hitchcock had made a documentary, it might look like this, and that is about the highest praise I can think of to heap on this movie's back. ****
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Knocked Up (Unrated) Order Now

lets face it, Apatow, Rogan and the gang are all very talented and hilarious. sure the characters are almost always simplified to demonstrate a certain persona of ourselves, but that doesnt stop the movie's message from ringing clear and the trip to be an enjoyable, and funny, one.

i doubt anyone is here reading this having not heard anything about the people involved in the flick, but if you enjoy the gang, then this is highly recommended. if you have never watch an apatow film, 40 yr old virgin is a better place to start (all his films are pretty much a 50/50 mix of his 2 television shows, "undeclared" and "freaks & geeks")

one thing i must recommend to newbies and fans alike, watch the plethora of outtakes on the bluray release, there are some plot arcs and ongoing jokes that were completely cut from the movie that are just hilarious!Get more detail about Knocked Up (Unrated).

Elizabeth: The Golden Age Decide Now

This movie may not be everyone's cup of tea, as it's dense on politics at times, and gruesome at others. However, for those reviewers who claim this film demonstrates religious bigotry, I beg to differ. Written and visual portraits from this time period reveal that the Spanish did indeed behave and dress the way they appeared in the film. Dour, black-wearing, bearded, somber, and convinced that Elizabeth was an Infidel who deserved to be destroyed. In addition, Philip II's infirmities and strange physique were portrayed as they truly were at the time; the House of Hapsburg and its various branches was becoming so inbred in early modern Europe that many of its members were physically deformed. This is no different than discussing how that the House of Tudor, for whatever physical/genetic reasons, clearly had reduced fertility during Henry VIII's time and afterward -- and saying so is hardly anti-Protestant prejudice. These are historical facts, and histories of the time period make them abundantly clear.

The movie does not try to absolve Elizabeth from all religious prejudice; indeed, it does show her ministers' gruesome vengeance -- with confessions extracted from torture -- against Catholics suspected of plotting her demise. However, it is important to keep in mind that context of the times, and that the religious wars were brutal across Europe. Compared to the Spanish Inquisition, Elizabethan England was far less violent.

Her reign was also less violent than her father Henry VIII's by far -- he whose rule saw widespread oppression and terrorism against Catholics and Protestants alike, depending on how the religious/political winds were blowing across Europe at any given moment, and given the views and actions of Henry's enemies/allies/wives/lovers of any given moment.

Frankly, I find it hard to believe that even the most devout of Catholics of today would still claim that it would have been better for autocratic Spain, which had practically NO democratic tradition, and in which the Inquisition against Protestants, Jews, Muslims, accused heretics, etc. etc. was in full swing, to have conquered England in 1588.... The movie is also very useful in demonstrating how Elizabeth's victories and her enduring rule were in large part a result of her turning herself into a quasi-religious icon for her realm -- something the first film in the series makes even more clear -- and the price she had to pay for that decision. Subtle people will detect the subtleties in the film, and appreciate them. People with a major religious axe to grind, however, probably will not.Get more detail about Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

Loving Annabelle Right now

I really had a hard time trying to get engulfed into the film. It lacks depth and proper transitioning, it missed some links **WARNING CONTAINS SPOILERS**

1: obviously Annabelle and Collins share a connection, however there is not a scene that seems to reinforce that idea other than when Annabelle reveals Collin's scars on her wrists. There is no reinforcing evidence that they are close friends or even kindred spirits.

2: the only teacher is Simone, there is no biology teacher, science teacher, just the poetry teacher. Hm..I guess the only curriculum at the all girls school is just POETRY huh? No math, no geology...

3: the father of the school makes several remarks that are arguable on a religious spectrum, I mean, yes it's good to play devil's advocate, and YES there are several Religious institutions that accept homosexuality, but I don't feel that this film even DESERVES to be as blatant as to contain arguable quotations.

But I can say, the final 20 minutes was worth watching. Watching Simone being whisked away by the authorities seemed pretty real minus Annabelle being at the location, I mean honestly it would've been more realistic if Anabelle had been at another location (library, room, another classroom) and then had found out about it later and made a visit at the prison.

The plot is great, it's got a Maedchen in Uniform feel..however it needed to be worked on so much more.



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Lowest Price Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

Well it was. Following along that old time tradition of labeling the odd-numbered Star Treks as inferior to the even-numbered ones, I set myself up for failure with the 1st, 3rd, and 5th, and got varying degrees of just that.


But I may have been far too generous in watching this film, due to its being even-numbered, and made by the same director who made Wrath of Khan.


I can't precisely point out just where or why, but this entire film felt like it was missing several hours of exposition, perhaps backstory from episodes of "The Next Generation" I never saw, and I end up feeling completely lost and confused, even in the face of the obvious.


The story claims to be some sort of "Cold War in Space!" idea, yet perhaps my being born in 1988 and never experiencing the Cold War leads me to not really understand this concept. I can definitely see it, but I can't FEEL it.


The story involves some kind of planetary explosion that threatens to destroy the Klingon Empire, so a Klingon ambassador goes to the Federation to try to negotiate a lasting peace treaty and an opening of the two nations to work together and help them. For reasons of "DRAMA!", Kirk is inexplicably racist against Klingons. This is explained via that old Red Herring, David, his son who was killed by the Klingons. In my original review for Search for Spock, I praised this as a show of Christopher Lloyd's Klingon guy's menace and its immediate effect on Kirk, which of course could not be as powerful as the loss of Spock, given that Kirk never really knew David.

But after watching the entire Original Series, and seeing Kirk's almost friendly relationship with enemy Klingons, this sudden fanatic, racist hatred of them in Star Trek VI really does seem to come out of nowhere. I mirrored Spock in feeling sudden confusion and shock at Kirk's inexplicable hatred of Klingons.


And for some reason, I never really feel as though this hatred is anything more than a Red Herring, or otherwise a plot device that never really ends up fully utilized by the script. He hates Klingons, yes, but this never in any way forces him to confront his racism or compromise his principles due to racism (or overcoming that racism), and in the end Kirk just handsomes his way through the events without really learning anything beyond the cheap and tawdry after-school special "Well I know now that Klingons don't ALL really want to hurt us, so I'll stop being racist!" message.


Racism is NOT a jealousy or a grudge or something cheap and tawdry that can be resolved by a single moment or sheer willpower. It can definitely be world-changing for a racist to have someone of the other race do something for or to them to completely change their view, but this movie has nothing at all like that---there are no Klingons who really affect Kirk in this way, not even the ambassador who confides in Kirk, up to his own death.


The main storyline involves an assassination of the Ambassador by people dressed as Federation crewmembers, coming after the apparent attack on the Ambassador's ship by the Enterprise, though the Enterprise did not fire. This leads to Kirk and McCoy being arrested by the Klingons (as they left the ship to go help the Ambassador afterwards) and them being sentenced to a prison planet after being incompetently defended by Colonel Worf (played by Michael Dorn, but not the same Worf as in TNG).


So we get an entire long and dreadfully dull sequence of Kirk and McCoy on a snowy prison planet, tangling with a shapeshifter, escaping, only to be betrayed by her and caught by the Klingons.


Meanwhile, Spock begins to uncover the conspiracy of the Ambassador's assassination, and for the life of me it just.. makes.. NO.. SENSE!!!

I fail to see the logic behind any of the motives behind the revealed conspirators, including a purely reverse-race based decision to cast the Admiral played by Brock Peters (who is black, btw) as the main racist against Klingons. The documentaries I saw seemed to vaguely imply that this decision was made based on some sort of attempt to show racism in an ironic sort of light, given that the black guy is one of the highest ranking people in Starfleet and is racist against similar brown (alien) people.


But the entire thing just makes NO SENSE! So he's racist, but WHY does he want to assassinate the Ambassador? Is he looking to provoke war with the Klingons? If so, WHY? Unless the Klingons are as stupid as they've been gradually shaped into being (as in, from TOS slick and smarmy clever bastards to TNG proud warrior race guys who hold honor above reason), then there's no concievable way the Federation could go to war with the Klingons and expect not to be horribly butchered, even if they win the war. Maybe the Romulans would emerge and smash the shattered remnants of the Federation? Maybe the Dominion would launch a lightning strike against them?


There's a thousand and eight logical and rational reasons NOT to go to war with the Klingons, but the racism against the Klingons is played up to a fanatical degree that is not only arbitrary (as the characters involved in this conspiracy, without revealing their identities, have absolutely nothing in their brief backstory or personality to support or justify this) but they seem to be incapable of realizing that THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE MAJORITY OF THE KLINGONS WANT!

Why else would General Chang, played by Christopher Plummer (who absolutely has a damn BLAST playing this guy, and hams it up so much he chews up more scenery than Shatner in three Star Trek films) and his group be working so closely with the heads of STARFLEET COMMAND to do this?


Star Trek Deep Space Nine had an episode called "In the Pale Moonlight" about how, in the midst of the Dominion War, the Federation was losing horribly. Casualties mounted every day, and the crew of Deep Space Nine could look horribly forward to looking through the daily casualties to find the names of friends, family, and loved ones killed in the war. This leads to Captain Sisko facing a crisis, as the Romulans have a high-ranking Senator looking to persuade the Empire to joining the Dominion in crushing the Federation.

So Sisko has a Cardassian spy work with a forger to create a false holo-recording of top Dominion officials apparently scheming to secretly attack the Romulans while they're recovering from a botched attack on the Federation before. They hope to use this lie to bring the Romulans in against the Dominion.

Unfortunately, that Senator recognizes its a fake, and leaves to go back to Romulus, undoubtedly with renewed hatred for the Federation for this latest attempt. Instead, the Cardassian spy has his ship blow up, making it look like a Dominion job, and ensuring the Romulans will find the fake holorecording.

Sisko realizes he has the blood of the Senator and others on his hands now, as he has betrayed Starfleet principles by engaging in shady dealings, bribery, threats, and indirect murder. And yet he can live with it because he did what he thought was right, and the war will soon turn with the Romulans to reinforce the Federation side.


This episode created immense controversy, as detractors claimed it went completely against Gene Roddenberry's vision of Star Trek as a peaceful, utopian future of exploration and diplomacy.

And it was one of the highest rated Star Trek episodes ever.



Shockingly, there's no such similar controversy about this movie, in which Starfleet ADMIRALS (and not just Captains) are in on a conspiracy to assassinate not only a Klingon Ambassador, but the FEDERATION PRESIDENT not out of any righteous need to end a losing war or stop a killing spree or crime, but to CAUSE a losing war, a killing spree, a crime. They seek to unleash a war between the Federation and the Klingons in which undoubtedly the Klingons would lose... and kill MILLIONS if not BILLIONS of Federation soldiers and civilians.


And all because of racism/hatred that up until then had never made itself even slightly known, and even when it was revealed, did not make a lick of sense.


Also, it was pretty boring.
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Low Price Law Abiding Citizen

The storyline flows and you will find yourself glued to this thriller, but you might not feel good about it later.
This is destined for cable and repeats which will downplay the brutality and heighten the tension of the story possibly for the better. Jamie and Gerard are serviceable and it is easy to get caught up in the story so I give this one a rent or watch on cable.Get more detail about Law Abiding Citizen.