Adventure, 108 Minutes, 2011
Yet another excellently made Australian movie. (I won’t go into, yet again, how impressed I’ve been by Australian productions lately.) Sure, it’s an “anthem” movie – in this case to caving (as an aside, when did we stop calling it “spelunking”? I liked “Spelunking”!) and underground diving. As you might expect this activity is incredibly specialized and incredibly dangerous and the movie does an excellent job of relating it meaningfully to the audience.
Comedy, 95 Minutes, 2010
In a good way this reminded me a lot of “The Big Lebowski” [IMDB]. Not in story but in sensibility and pacing. It’s not as good – Lebowski is an acknowledged classic from master filmmakers after all – but fans of it should like this. A subdued kind of depressiveness permeates the entire thing but is offset by moments of deep optimism and emotion.
Adventure, 142 Minutes, 2012
I have to begin this by admitting that I’ve not read these books. My wife has, however, and wanted to see the movie and I want to continue to see my wife so we watched it. So I can only speak to the film and not how well it honors its source material.
Horror, 103 Minutes, 2010
With almost no tweaking this could easily be a remake of “Poltergeist” [IMDB]. Although the haunted house angle (which was completely superfluous to begin with) is abandoned early the plot has all the same touch-points. Josh and Renai’s son, Dalton, enters into an unexplained coma that appears more like normal sleep than anything medical. Surrounding this are terrifying visions and things that go bump-in-the-night.
Family, 86 Minutes, 2012
My 10 year daughter loved this movie. I didn’t. Like other attempts to enbiggen Dr. Suess to feature-lengths it’s too self-indulgent with its own ideas and loses the soul of the source material. “The Lorax” was a simple story with some very basic themes – most of which seem to have been lost in this translation.
“I Spit on Your Grave” on IMDB
Horror, 108 Minutes, 2010
This is not a movie for a first date… or a third for that matter. Or, in fact, any week were you might want to actually have sex… on second thought make that any month. This is a remake of the controversial 1978 classic horror movie of the same name [IMDB]. Often mislabeled an exploitation film the original was anything but sexual. (While I’m sadly sure that some people must enjoy this kind of brutality it was clearly not the intention of the film to cater to that audience.)
Thriller, 90 Minutes, 2009
The grunting, slobbering core of this movie is an unwieldy, multi-tentacled plot that drags itself into your living room, sits in your favorite chair and demands, “what kind of snacks you got?” It sits there eating your food and throwing what it thinks are insanely clever ideas at you for 90 minutes then gets up. That’s when you notice the smell and the movie’s core, noticing your look of disgust, admits: “By the way, I shit in your chair.”
“Texas Killing Fields” on IMDB
Crime Thriller, 105 Minutes, 2011
I have to admit I’d never heard of this movie before. My wife started it before I came into the room and when I saw the title I assumed “B-grade horror”. Then when I started seeing the cast I thought, “Hey – this is an actual real movie!” And indeed it was – A-list actors and everything!
Drama, 99 Minutes, 2010:
Just to clear the field, to begin with this movie revolves around kids dying of leukemia. Much of it takes place in the hospital room of two kids dying of leukemia. The rest of it deals with the parents of those two kids who are dying of leukemia. Basically if you’re already sick of hearing about kids dying of leukemia then you probably won’t like this movie much.
Thriller, 95 Minutes, 2009
While the description and the title may lead you to instantly think “slasher flick” (I did) there’s actually a deeper story here. It doesn’t always work (and sometimes it really doesn’t work) but it’s an honest attempt to break the mold and for that alone it deserves some love.
