Tag: Review

Movie Review: Sanctum

“Sanctum” on IMDB

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.

(more…)

Movie Review: Pete Smalls is Dead

“Pete Smalls is Dead” on IMDB

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.

(more…)

Movie Review: Insidious

“Insidious” on IMDB

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.

(more…)

Movie Review: The Lorax

“The Lorax” on IMDB

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.

(more…)