Not your average blowup doll

Lars and the Real Girl (2007) has been advertised as a movie about a guy in love with a sex doll. And, to a certain point, it is. I mean, there is a sex doll. And Lars, the main character, definitely believes he is in love with her.

Great Movies: Amelie

Amelie, 2001
The plot of Amelie basically goes like this: Girl sees boy, girl likes boy, girl acts wacky, girl meets boy. This is the plot of roughly a bazillion movies, almost of which I hate. What makes Amelie stand out, what makes All great movies stand out, is how they go about their business.
Amelie stars [...]

American Snoozter…

How can a movie filled with graphic violence, Russell Crowe and Denzell Washington be boring? Don’t ask me, ask Ridley Scott. American Gangster, directed by Ridley Scott, is advertised as the basically true story of Frank Lucas, a Harlem Gangster during the late 60’s and early 70’s.

Greatness everywhere: The Princess Bride

The Princess Bride, by William Goldman (1973)
The Princess Bride, Directed by Rob Reiner (1987)
Generally, when I read books that movies are based on, it’s with regret. Rarely, almost never, does the movie compete at all. Books simply have more room for description, imagination… Movies are restricted by what you can actually see.
(Aside: one exception where [...]

Great Movies: Star Wars

Star Wars, 1977
Intellectually, I know that The Empire Strikes Back was actually the best of the 6 Star Wars movies. Fortunately, my love of Star Wars has very little to do with my brain, and everything to do with my brain, my ears, and my memory. From the first moment the scrolling story comes across [...]

Podcasts worth a listen..

I think by this point, people have either gotten on the podcast train, or they’re just not interested. Personally, I love ‘em. ITunes has them all nicely organized for you, (and they’re free) but there are other places you can download them as well. (I think amazon, yahoo, I’m sure there are others, if you [...]

Michael Clayton

Maybe I missed something while watching this movie. (If I did, my wife missed the same things.) Everything I’d heard about this movie was about how great it was, how great the acting was, how it was well written, etc. Well… It was an ok movie, but I wouldn’t let the word “great” anywhere near [...]

La Vie en Rose

La Vie en Rose is a French Bio-epic about Edith Piaf.
I couldn’t watch this movie without flashing back constantly to my high school and middle school French teacher, Madame Clowes. She was French-Canadian, and loved to shower us with French culture. She showed us the Tour de France, French tv shows. I saw my first [...]

Gone baby gone

There’s been a lot of movie posts recently, because, ummm, we’ve been watching a lot of movies. I like to watch the Oscars, and I like to have watched at least some of the big Oscar movies. Since I live in Bangor, generally I get to wait until they get out on DVD.
Gone, baby, gone [...]

Juno

I think most people have probably heard of, and made their opinion about Juno already. Probably, most people who thought they would like it have seen it already. So.. I’m not going to spend a ton of time on this movie, other than to say, I wanted to see Juno, but I wasn’t sure how [...]