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| EFC STATS |
| Movies Listed: |
17339 |
| Total Ratings: |
211099 |
| Total Reviews: |
21255 |
![[49304102 Hits]](/cgi-bin/gd.cgi?49304102)
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| WHERE I STAND |
"We Can All Hope To Stand Beside Hank Greenspun"
Erik Childress says... "SCREENED AT THE 2008 CINEVEGAS FILM FESTIVAL: To me, the name of “Greenspun” had always fit into a very narrow definition. Sure, as a journalist myself to a certain degree, I knew the familial patriarch, Hank, for his years of service to the Las Vegas Sun but anytime I heard the surname my brain immediately registered the family’s connection to the roots of the CineVegas Film Festival. So when I heard that 2008’s tenth anniversary was going to be premiering a documentary about Mr. Hank Greenspun, there was the associated trepidation that it was going to be an unapologetic love letter with a leg up among the festival’s programmers. The lovefest part was certainly true, but that couldn’t be helped. Who would even want to find flaws within a life as well spent as this? As Hank’s history is told through the inner monologue of Anthony Hopkins and shaped by Scott Goldstein, like me you will have the feeling that you’re watching one of the greatest stories you’ve never been told unfold with all the twists of a great spy thriller." (more)
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| HANCOCK |
"The best superhero flick since....well, since Iron Man."
Mel Valentin says... "Less than nine months after Will Smith saved the world from a mutated virus (or rather a character he played saved the world), actor Will Smith is back in "Hancock," this time playing a dissolute, destitute, bad-tempered superhero, John Hancock. Directed by Peter Berg ("The Kingdom," "Friday Night Lights," "The Rundown," "Very Bad Things") and written by Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan, "Hancock" resembles a certain spandex-loving superhero who first made an appearance seventy years ago, Superman, with a backstory inspired by Jack Kirby’s work for DC and Marvel Comics in the 1970s (saying more would involve spoilers, unfortunately). An often awkward mix of broad comedy, straight drama, and superhero action, "Hancock" is definitely flawed, but it benefits from a continuity-free storyline, engaging turns from a talented cast (no surprise there), and the presence of thematic depth (definitely a surprise)." (more)
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| HANCOCK |
"With great eye candy comes mediocre filmmaking"
Lybarger says... "The script for “Hancock” has been bouncing around Hollywood since 1996, continually being revised and reworked for a staggering variety of studios, directors and stars. And it’s certainly evident in the final film." (more)
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| HANCOCK |
"Don't Forget His Sidekick, The Fantastic Fifth"
Peter Sobczynski says... "By the time that you are reading these words, 2008 will be half-over and the general consensus seems to be that it has not exactly been a banner year from a cinematic perspective. Oh sure, there have been some good-to-great movies that have popped up from time to time to reassure us that all is not lost, but outside of the occasional studio anomaly like “Iron Man,” “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and last week’s one-two punch of “WALL*E” and “Wanted“ and smaller and more modestly distributed specialty items such as “Snow Angels,” “Diary of the Dead,” “Shine a Light,” “My Blueberry Nights” and “My Winnipeg,” moviegoers have been inundated with a number of complete artistic abdications that is so overwhelming that such seemingly indefensible craptaculars as “Prom Night,” “Drillbit Taylor” and “Made of Honor” actually aren’t the worst of the bunch by a long shot. The one good thing about this seemingly never-ending parade of celluloid flotsam is that, for the most part, they at least had the courtesy to announce their awfulness in such a direct and up-front manner that unless you were professionally obligated to sit through them or an eternal optimist, you could easily figure out that they were essentially useless and skip over them without even a moment’s hesitation that you might be missing out on something worth seeing. The problem with “Hancock,” on the other hand, is that it is a bad movie that has a lot of seemingly surefire elements working in its favor--a game cast, a director who has done some good and interesting things in the past and who has been on the cusp of a major career breakthrough for a while now and an enormously intriguing premise--and it always seems like it is on the verge of correcting its problems and transforming itself into the genre-busting classic that it is clearly trying to be. And yet, it never quite finds its footing and just at the point when it is about to get really interesting, it devolves into a couple of reels of noisy and pointless action beats that are so arbitrary that it feels as if they were trucked in wholesale from a different and far less ambitious movie." (more)
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| ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE |
"And Moviegoers Should Love Her Too"
Erik Childress says... "SCREENED AT THE 2008 CHICAGO FLASHBACK WEEKEND: A lot of psychologists and cinema analysts will preach to you the inner meaning behind all the shocking violence and effect on audiences that horror films leave in their wake. Purity of the virgin always equals your best chance for an escape. Sex is dirty and cliches are even messier. The Scream trilogy got a lot of mileage satirizing the very elements that have become commonplace since the advent of John Carpenter’s Halloween 30 years ago, a film whose opening scene put us right into the POV of the killer. Countless sequels, remakes and low budget wannabes later, “torture porn” is now all the rage and the “experts” are still crying foul, throwing a genre under the bus for being a one-chop-stop for cheap gore with filmmakers not even worth that much. Along comes a film like Mandy Lane though, held up in distribution hell since it’s acquisition at the 2006 Toronto Film Fesitval, and is just waiting out there to put the kind of artistic stamp on the elements that even the most dismissive thumbnoses will be contemplating long after the final body is dispatched." (more)
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| HANCOCK |
"Going Off Third-Cocked"
Erik Childress says... "Hancock is destined to go down as one of the biggest misfires in high-concept history. Stifling the most memorable segment from Superman III combined with the pathos of a Five for Fighting song, there are so many ideas brimming with potential during its barely 90-minute running time that the entire experience frustrates its audience like a hostage constantly being teased with ripe fruit only to be taken away each time its gets close to our touch. Reasonably entertaining for its first act, Hancock quickly begins to show all the signs of a film either taken away from its director or edited down in panic mode by a studio who didn’t know what they had. By the expedited conclusion it all feels less like a Peter Berg film and just another chapter in Will Smith’s tentpole history of major creative failures." (more)
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| WALL•E |
"Love machine."
Rob Gonsalves says... "Even a robot can become human by watching old movies. Specifically old musicals in which people dance and hold hands." (more)
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| WALL•E |
"You can’t say no to those big metallic eyes."
Lybarger says... "It’s been such a lousy year for romantic comedies that the only engaging one features a pair of robots." (more)
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DVD REVIEWS FOR 7/4: BARRACUDA!
by Peter Sobczynski |
| "In which your faithful critic takes a look at one of the best TV shows of 2007 and 2008, examines the homicidal rampages enacted by a ventriloquist’s dummy and Winona Ryder and revels in the glory that is Chuck Norris beating the crap out of people in the name of duty and humanity." (more) |
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DVD REVIEW: XANADU - MAGICAL MUSIC EDITION
by Brian Orndorf |
| "Someone somewhere had the nutty idea to connect the music from the 1940s to the music of the late 1970s, and explore that combustible relationship to fashion the ultimate disco movie of 1980. It was the year that gave us “Flash Gordon,” “Can’t Stop the Music,” and “The Apple,” yet “Xanadu” trumped them all with its pageantry of glitter, roller skating, and yearning to put on a show larger than life to kick off the new decade on a skyrocketing fantastical note of nylon-jumpsuited ecstasy." (more) |
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DVD REVIEW: CINEMATIC TITANIC - DOOMSDAY MACHINE
by Brian Orndorf |
| "It certainly took the gang at Cinematic Titanic enough time to regroup, but the six-month wait between episodes was worth the unbearable impatience. Backing away after the release of “The Oozing Skull” to reassess their strengths and weaknesses, Titanic storms back with “Doomsday Machine,” and while the series is starting to solidify pleasingly, the movie selection for this outing is perhaps too formidable for even this squad of ace comedians to conquer with quips." (more) |
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'DAMN, I'M STARTING TO SOUND LIKE THE BACK OF A VIDEO BOX.'
- Superfly, HBS Reviewer
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