Comedy, 95 Minutes, 2009
[My daughter recently discovered that all her Jewish friends go the movies on Christmas day. She came up with the idea of watching a movie for each night of Hanukkah. This is the eighth and final one!]
Tag: Adventure
Hanukkah Movie Marathon: Hudson Hawk
Adventure, 100 Minutes, 1991
[My daughter recently discovered that all her Jewish friends go the movies on Christmas day. She came up with the idea of watching a movie for each night of Hanukkah. This is number five!]
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Movie Review: Mirror Mirror
Fantasy, 106 Minutes, 2012
Do you know the story of Snow White? No? Don’t worry – neither do the people who made this movie. There’s a mish-mash of references to the original story and the Disney version but mostly it’s stuff that they just plain made up. Like most family films today there are a lot of modern references and a healthy dose of feminism.
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Movie Review: I Am Number Four
Sci-fi, 109 Minutes, 2011
A race of evil teethy, gill-faced aliens with big guns invade a planet and destroy it. The only survivors are nine magic kids and their guardians who move to Earth and go into hiding. The aliens send a team of bounty hunters to kill the kids because, for some reason, the kids could stop the aliens from destroying Earth even though they couldn’t do anything to save their own planet.
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Movie Review: Brave
Fantasy, 93 Minutes, 2012:
Pixar makes good movies. Period. At some point, I’m sure, some relatively minor decision will snowball out of control and they’ll release a steaming pile of crap. Something that will taint their good name and become the butt of jokes for an entire generation of movie fans. The Internet will rip it to shreds with perverse glee. It will be mentioned in the same breath as “Howard the Duck” [IMDB] and “Leonard Part 6” [IMDB].
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Movie Review: Sanctum
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.
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Movie Review: The Hunger Games
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.
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Movie Review: The Lorax
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.
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Movie Review: The Grey
Thriller, 117 Minutes, 2011
Survival thrillers are a favorite of mine. Seeing people use the materials at hand and overcome incredible odds never gets old. I assumed I’d see men at their breaking points MacGyvering weapons and overcoming fierce wolves. Unfortunately this isn’t that kind of movie (although it repeatedly probes in that direction). But I really thought it was and I must admit that I had a very hard time switching gears and it definitely colored my perceptions.
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Movie Review: The Amazing Spider-Man
“The Amazing Spider-Man” on IMDB
Action, 136 Minutes, 2012
No matter where you fall on the question of a character reboot this soon after the Sam Raimi trilogy or the whole “Mary Jane Watson versus Gwen Stacey” thing or even the “biologic versus mechanical web shooters” decision it’s hard to argue that this isn’t a damn good movie. That said it’s impossible to talk about this without drawing comparisons to Sam Raimi’s masterful effort released a very short 10 years ago – but we’re not bitter!
