Movie Review: Watchmen (2009)

Watchmen (2009) 
Starring: Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Patrick Wilson, Carla Gugino

Directed By: Zack Snyder

Top 5 Worst Movies of 2008

Because I make an effort to avoid bad movies, my year-end worst lists are always my least complete. I read reviews, early buzz, and have little affinity for genres that tend to produce crappy movies, so for me to see a bad film, it had to have something going for it. The result is a list of movies that many of you may have enjoyed, some may even be making year end best of lists. This doesn’t necessarily make you wrong and me right (although, I totally am), but rather shows that I don’t merely listen to critical consensus or popular thought, and also shows that sometimes I’m wrong about what I think will be a good movie when it comes time for me to pick out an evening’s entertainment.

Top 20 Comic Book Movies of All-Time

I grew up a comic book fan, falling in and out of the habit as I got older. The times in my life where I stopped reading comics didn’t have too much to do with the comics themselves (although they probably did at times parallel a downturn in quality in the X-Men, the primary series I collected), but more to do with a lack of funds or my other entertainment options taking up my time. But then they started making movies about comics — more specifically, they started making GOOD movies about comics, and I decided to start reading comics again (albeit in much smaller doses).

So I write this list both as a fan of movies and a fan of comics. Thus, I’m also a big fan of movies based on comic books, when I’m not busy being a big critic of movies based on comics that fail to live up to the source material. This is a list I’ve been meaning to write for a few years now, and in that time, the list of candidates has only grown. Because the world of comic book adaptations has grown to encompass a nice variety of of genres and types, I felt a bigger list of 20 would lead to a more diverse and interesting collection than would a traditional list of 10. I’ll admit, I haven’t seen every comic book movie released, but I have seen every one that’s been released that I plan on seeing (meaning that if I haven’t seen a movie by now, I probably never will, because I’ve heard it sucks).

But first, I’ll clarify what I mean by “comic book movies”. For the purpose of this list, a comic book movie is any feature length film whose story and/or characters originally appeared in a comic book (and a comic book includes comics, comic strips, graphic novels, or manga). So films with comic book themes that didn’t originate in the world of comics, such as The Incredibles, Unbreakable, or Hancock, don’t qualify. Nor do sci-fish properties that originated elsewhere but have since become comic books, such as Transformers (not that it would ever make a list of mine).

The other thing I should clarify is what I mean by “top”. In this, I’m mostly judging the films by the quality of the films themselves, and less so by how strong they are as adaptations, although that will obviously come into play. The reason this isn’t simply a list on the best adaptations is twofold: one, I haven’t read all the source material for every comic book movie, and two, some movies don’t necessarily adapt one source as much as they borrow from several (that said, if I have read the source material, it would obviously affect my opinion of the film). Other than that, “top” is an amalgamation between “best” and “favourite”. And now, on to the list…

TIFF 08: Day 10

This one’s a couple days late, but I didn’t feel like lugging around the laptop one more day and didn’t feel like writing when we got home from our last screening. I’m home now, and ready to put the whole whirlwind trip behind me. It was a great time, but I’m glad to be home with my couch and my dog. So here’s one more day of TIFFing before I get back into the routine of the real world.

Read on for musings on Chocolate, The Real Shaolin, and Miracle at St. Anna, plus a couple of wrap-up thoughts…

TIFF 08: Day 4

Three days and nine movies in, and the free stuff well ran dry today.

When you wait for a screening to start, you generally have to wait outside (except at the Scotiabank Centre), and if you want to get a good seat you have to wait outside for awhile. Companies looking to push samples of their product on people thus have a captive audience, which has led to us receiving a lot of free shit, some good, some bad. So far, we’ve gotten two free cans of Red Bull, a couple Dole Fruit Sparklers, a mini-bag of Starbucks coffee beans, a couple other coffee-related samples (I didn’t pay attention since I don’t drink coffee), two t-shirts, a bag of rice chips (sucked), some stupid hand puzzle, and a pair of mini binoculars (which we haven’t needn’t since we wait in lines to get good seats and all, but could come in handy for the upcoming Neil Young concert I suppose). But nothing today. Hopefully this doesn’t mean the end and is merely a result that we tended to stay indoors today because of the rain (both subway stops had indoor entrances to where we were leaving and arriving). I’m still hoping that the Sun Chips people are trying to expand their influence… I love those things.

Read on for musings on Food, Inc., Slumdog Millionaire, and Zack and Miri Make a Porno…

TIFF 08: Day 3

Another day, another three movies. This one was tougher, as the early festival adrenaline was gone and I stayed up too late writing the last post. That, or possibly because the films weren’t as good to keep me from feeling drowsy. To get the celebrity stuff out of the way early: Ed Harris showed up for the early morning screening of Appaloosa to introduce it, which was a nice touch. My wife saw Sarah Polley in the restroom line after a screening (then made sure I stuck around to see her… after the restroom). Then at the big premiere for Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, the stars came out, including Michael Cera and Jay Baruchel. Kim was very excited for them, getting to see them enter the theatre (they sat pretty close to us). They stuck around for a short Q&A, so that was kinda fun. On the way home, we passed the Blindness premiere at the Elgin, catching glimpses of Danny Glover, Geoffrey Rush, and Eric Balfour (wait… does Eric Balfour count as a celebrity sighting?).

Read on for musings on Apaloosa, Edison & Leo, and Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist…

Movie Review: Wanted (2008)

Wanted (2008) 

Starring: James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, Terence Stamp, Thomas Kretschmann, Common, David O’Hara, Chris Pratt

Directed by: Timur Bekmambetov

Movie Review Catch-up

This quickie review package contains two 2008 theatrical releases, the sort of thing that the old me would have obsessively tried to write out full reviews for, even if I didn’t have the time. Now, I’m trying to branch out a bit more, so movies like these are getting lost in the shuffle. Which isn’t a judgement on the films themselves necessarily, but more that I’ve now gotten far enough away from them that I probably wouldn’t be able to give them a full write-up anyway. Especially since blockbuster season is upon us and I try to get my thoughts out there on the movies people are more likely to see.

Read on for reviews of:
The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (2005)
Margot at the Wedding (2007)
Redbelt (2008) 
The Visitor (2008) 

Movie Review: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008) 

Starring: Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Ben Barnes, Sergio Castellitto, Peter Dinklage, Warwick Davis, Vincent Grass

Directed by: Andrew Adamson

Movie Review Catch-up

I’ve been making some changes in how I’m going to pursue this reviewing hobby of mine, starting with where my reviews will be posted, and where they won’t (besides here, of course). Another big change I’ve decided to make for this year is what I’ll be reviewing. In the past, I made a point of reviewing every movie I saw from the current year (i.e., if I saw a 2007 film in 2007, in theatre or on DVD, I tried to review it). This has become an unmanageable pace for me, particularly at the end of the year as I cram to get movies in for my year end lists and Andy Movie Awards posts.

As a result, I often feel like I have a big backlog of movies I “have” to review, which is a little silly, I know. My bigger concern is my desire to review all recent-ish movies has kept me from doing other sorts of posts, like TV or music reviews, older movies, or lists I’ve had bubbling in my head. So from now on, I’ll be doing fewer movie reviews, but hopefully more other kinds of posts, which should be fun for me (which is what this is all about, after all).

That said, the biggest reason I made a point of reviewing newish movies is that it’s the area that I think most people are most interested in reading my opinion of. If a movie is still in theatres or new to DVD, people may be interested in what I thought of it, so they can decide whether or not they want to see (that is, if they’re interested in my opinion of anything. I’ll assume some people are, otherwise, I’ll assume no one is reading this). To that end, periodically I’m going to do movie review catch-up posts, where I do mini-reviews for a handful of recent movies that I never got around to reviewing. These mini-reviews will basically be a paragraph of opinion that will mostly be summary-less, with an assigned score. I think this will be a good solution for movies I don’t have a whole lot to say about, but still have a bit of an opinion of. Sound good?

Read on for reviews of:
Be Kind Rewind (2008) 
Black Book (2007)
Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
Lust, Caution (2007)
Persepolis (2007)

Movie Review: The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)

The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) 

Starring: Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Eric Bana, Jim Sturgess, Kristin Scott Thomas, Mark Rylance, David Morrissey

Directed by: Justin Chadwick

Movie Review: Charlie Wilson’s War (2007)

Charlie Wilson’s War (2007)

Starring: Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Ned Beatty, Emily Blunt

Directed by: Mike Nichols

Top 10 Movies of 2007

Here it is, my long awaited Top 10 Movies of 2007 list (and by “long awaited”, I’m referring to myself, as I’m not sure anyone else has been waiting for this). This is later then I usually prefer to post this list (on the principle that the later you get into the year, the less people care about the previous year), but since I added a movie to this list over the weekend, I’m glad I waited. As of right now, I’ve seen 65 different 2007 movies (for the complete list, click here), including pretty much everything I think would contend for this list. Notable movies I haven’t seen yet that could’ve contended for the list include Persepolis, Lust, Caution, and The Darjeeling Limited, but I’m really happy with the way my list looks right now, as it’s been an extremely good year for movies. As it is, I had to push some really good movies off my honourable mentions list, so I better post this before more might have to go. To give you an idea of how I felt about this year, everything on list, including honourable mentions, rated 4 stars out of 5 or higher. So if you feel like you haven’t seen a lot of good movies this year, you should give some these a try.

Movie Review: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

Starring: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, Anne Consigny, Patrick Chesnais, Marina Hands, Max von Sydow

Directed by: Julian Schnabel

Movie Review: Away from Her (2007)

Away from Her (2007)

Starring: Julie Christie, Gordon Pinsent, Olympia Dukakis, Michael Murphy, Kristen Thomson, Wendy Crewson

Directed by: Sarah Polley