Few directors could be able to turn a disaster-in-the-making into a masterpiece. Darren Aronofsky is one of those very few directors whose vision and creative genius could accomplish such a feat. He punched us in the mouth before with the brilliantly complex and gritty pi, turned us inside out with the estranging Requiem For A Dream and now throws The Fountain at us. Yes, eventhough he has made only a handful of movies, Darren Aronofsky is a true movie genius in my book. However, as said, this could quite easily have bombed in the hands of a less dedicated filmmaker, since the movie started in what most would call absolute disaster; he could have called it The Fountain Redux. With his prodigious lead and Hollywood golden boy Brad Pitt walking out on the movie halfway, seeing his project shelved and his budget cut in half, he could have done much, much worse than this.

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Cliffhanger endings can either make you more excited for the next installment or make you wish you not wasted eighteen hours of your life in front of the television. The cliffhanger ending of the first season had Clark leaving Chloe at the spring formal in order to save Lana from a deadly tornado. Thankfully, with the first episode, titled Vortex not only picks up where the previous season leaves off, but sets the second season of Smallville to a more dynamic direction.
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I had missed the so-called ’8 Films To Die For Festival’ last year, since the general concept was, last November, for one day in one week across the US, eight horror suspense films that ‘mainstream studios’ won’t touch because they are so demented and terrifying, or something along those lines. It was really a nice gimmick to make the films sound a bit edgy. Now that these films are out on DVD, I took a chance on one of them, Mike Mendez’ The Gravedancers, and I’m a bit baffled- why give this film such a limited screening?
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Filmed in 2003 but kept on the shelf until now, Slow Burn smells a lot like a flimsy version of The Usual Suspects. While the plot of this so-so film noir comprises plenty of bewildering twists that shade most of its positives, the movie is effective enough to maintain a fast pace and generate a considerable amount of suspense.
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Firehouse Dog is likely to lie low at the box office and could have easily skipped a theatrical release and went straight to video, but as an overall enjoyable romp doing an OK job at promoting a fairly common moral, the movie is worth the price of its admission ticket.
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Are We Done Yet? feels much like a movie without a script. It offers no laughs and no surprises, and for most of its 90 minutes, plays like an exact copy of its deplorable predecessor Are We There Yet?. Young cinemagoers may occasionally appreciate the film’s humdrum silliness, but adults are likely to check their watch and think: is this movie over yet?
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Sneaking under the radar in U.S. movie theaters this weekend, Pathfinder tells the story of a young boy in the ninth century who refuses to kill alongside his Viking father during an exploration adventure and grows up raised by the indian tribes he once refused to kill. Years later, when his adopted family and culture is slaughtered by a new batch of Vikings, he sets out to get revenge. Throw in elements of the Rambo films, a few touches of Conan and this may be close to something to it, just Native Americans vs. bloodthirsty vikings along the snowcapped mountians (!) of the Massachusetts coastline. That’s the entire film in a nutshell, all 88 minutes of it-even though the film feels like it’s dragging for two hours.
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The team that in 2004 brought us Shaun of the dead (accurately described as a ‘romzomcom’), this year tackles cop-movies. By their own admission, writer/actor Simon Pegg and writer/director Edgar Wright wanted to make ‘Midsummer Murders by John Woo’. What they give us is the story of an excellent London police officer marooned in a backwards village. Being surrounded by idiots, he then has to solve a string of murders everybody else believes to be accidents.
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The long awaited Robert Rodriguez / Quentin Tarantino double feature homage to 1970’s exploitation films has arrived in over the top blood and guts glory. Grindhouse is not for the weak of heart, but you don’t need to be a fan of the zombie, slasher or horror film genre to enjoy this ride; though an appreciation for twisted jokes helps.
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It’s like a who’s who of the Hollywood “it” crowd. Except Emilio Estevez hasn’t been “it” in over a decade. How in the world did he round up this impressive cast? If only Kevin Bacon had been in it (oh but that game is easy enough already.) Simply put, this movie shows the backstory of the hotel workers and guests at the location where Bobby Kennedy was shot in 1968 on the day of the shooting. It’s an interesting enough concept that unfortunately fails on a number of levels.
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