“Halloween II” was not shown to press, but last night contributor Phil Fava attended a midnight screening just so he could file this report. Here’s Phil: What was I expecting, here? I don’t know. I didn’t necessarily anticipate good taste or stunning craftsmanship, but I definitely didn’t anticipate this. Truth be told, I’m just angry. […]
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Quentin Tarantino is a filmmaker. Love him or hate him, the man has a passion and reverence for cinema as well as a definite style in crafting his own projects. “Inglourious Basterds“, the writer/director’s latest, took more than a decade to come to the screen. The film is many things; one that it is not […]
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Neill Blomkamp‘s feature-length directorial debut does what really good science fiction does—it makes you think about the world you live in. It also does what mainstream crowd-pleasing sci-fi does and entertains with a lot of well-designed action scenes and classic Hollywood tropes. Using a stranded and impoverished alien race as a stand-in for the apartheid […]
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Indie filmmaker and contributor Trey Hock emailed me this morning with this passionate negative counterpoint to my review and Aaron’s review of “District 9,” proving that this is a movie that will generate lots of discussion. Here’s Trey: What could have been a gripping, insightful, political drama unravels to become a chase film, splatter-fest in […]
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Are we (being the humbles souls here at Transbuddha HQ) fans of Neill Blomkamp? After over five years of posting the man’s work, I should certainly say so. I’ll admit that I’ve been ready for “District 9” (a vastly expanded take on his “Alive in Joberg” short) since the moment it was announced, and with […]
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I’ll start off this review by stating that I’m a big fan of master animé director Hayao Miyazaki. A lot of people call him the Japanese Walt Disney, but as far as I’m concerned he could make Mickey’s creator his little bitch if he ever wanted. Having said that, it’s probably easy to deduce that […]
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At some point (probably around the time Star Wars made a wombo amount of money), Hollywood came to the conclusion that sci-fi movies were also exclusively action movies. While there’s nothing wrong with those two genres together, sci-fi geeks like myself have enjoyed the past summer, which gave us two different, and authentically really good […]
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Bandslam is a clichéd, hackneyed, overdone, montage-filled paint-by-numbers tale of teenage angst, love, lessons about life, and triumph. And yet it’s still better than G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. As unoriginal, and at times truly awful, this film is, it’s also got a little spark which provides moments better than they have any right […]
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From the quick-cut opening scenes in “The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard,” it’s obvious what director Neal Brennan has in mind. He’s hoping that the lightning-fast pace of the movie will cover up for the fact that nothing about it is neither fresh nor funny. On paper, casting Jermey Piven (the fast-talking Hollywood super agent […]
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Let’s get this straight right from the get-go: I had no real expectations with this film except wanting to leave without getting too bored or having the film make my eyes bleed. One out of two isn’t bad. Even with the bar set so low G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra finds a way to […]
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“Dying is easy, comedy is hard.” George Bernard’s famous quote is turned upside down by Judd Apatow in his return to the director’s chair. After the success of “Knocked Up,” Apatow took some time off to produce a gaggle of films for friends and proteges. Some worked (“Saving Sarah Marshall,” “Super Bad”), and others were […]
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If you had to pigeonhole it, you could certainly call “(500) Days of Summer” a romantic comedy. It’s got its fair share of romance and, at times, it can be pretty funny. But it more often than not, the movie does what other romantic comedies can never seem to do convincingly: It celebrates those special […]
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“The Hurt Locker” is one of those movies where the story arc just kind of sneaks up on you when you’re not looking. It’s a lot like the situation that its principal characters find themselves in every day. Bomb defusers must always be alert. A man on a cell phone peeking out from a doorway […]
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J.D. is back again with Eric to review the sixth Harry Potter movie. This series has been a contentious one in the past, with Eric being consistently disappointed and J.D., who has read all the books, wondering what the hell is wrong with him. But wait, there’s more! For Eric’s more detailed print review of […]
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The sixth filmic adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s enormously popular book series arrives in theaters with an inordinate amount of baggage from five movies of myth-building and expectations, so it almost seems set up to fail. While “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” is only the second film (along with “Prisoner of Azkaban”) to deliver a […]
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