// Category Archive for: Movie Reviews

DVD Review: The Cary Grant Film Collection

By Melissa Bratcher

An Affair To Remember (1957)

It is nearly impossible to write about Cary Grant without mentioning the words suave, dashing, elegant, or handsome, so let’s just get all of those words out of the way now. Twentieth Century Fox has released a six-DVD box set of a collection of Cary Grant films and it’s a decent overview of his career.

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DVD Review: John Dies At The End

By Less Lee Moore

John Dies At The End is a remarkably original movie, even though it’s based on a novel. Director Don Coscarelli, who also adapted the screenplay, has merged several different, potentially conflicting styles— horror, comedy, sci fi—into a movie that resides firmly in its own universe(s).

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Movie Review: Peaches Does Herself

By Less Lee Moore

Photo © Angel Ceballos

You don’t need to know her music beforehand to “get” the new concert-cum-performance-art film from Peaches, but even fans will marvel at how accurately the songs in Peaches Does Herself tell the story, as if they were written expressly for the film. Furthermore, although the narrative is fairly simple, the concepts within it are complex, including sex, romance, gender, confusion, anger, and acceptance.

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Movie Review: After Earth

By Lisa Anderson

If you’ve been to any of the tentpole genre movies that have come out this summer (or even in the last year), you’ve probably seen ads for After Earth. This sci-fi vehicle features real-life father and son Will and Jaden Smith as Rangers who get stranded on a hostile Earth in the distant future. What you may not know, because the marketing downplayed it, is that it was directed and co-written by M Night Shyamalan, who was once lauded as a brilliant auteur but who has fallen into disfavor.

I never have been in the Shyamalan-hate camp. Like most people who saw it, I enjoyed The Sixth Sense, but I also enjoyed his other movies that I’ve seen. Signs and Unbreakable put a novel twist on the alien-invasion movie and the superhero movie, respectively, even if looking back on it, the big reveal in Unbreakable is kind of problematic. The Village had an interesting take on the post-9-11 security era, even though you rarely see that discussed. I even have an unreasonable love for the much-maligned Lady in the Water, although admittedly I’m a myth-geek who first encountered Joseph Campbell in grade school.

With all of that said I will admit that I haven’t yet seen The Last Airbender, The Happening, or Devil, which have as much to do with the sinking of Shyamalan’s stock as his earlier work. And After Earth is unlikely to be the movie that rehabilitates his reputation.

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DVD Review: Young & Wild

By Chelsea Spear

Eighteen-year-old Daniela has the makings of a precocious sex geek. She is bisexual and game to playing with new partners, and she writes about her adventures in her blog, “Jovenes & Alocada.” Two factors make Daniela’s story a little more notable: She grew up in Chile during the post-Pinochet era, and her family is deeply involved with the Evangelical church. Daniela’s experiences as a queer teenager comprise the story of Young & Wild.

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Movie Review: Charles Bradley: Soul Of America

By Less Lee Moore

To Charles Bradley, the American dream felt particularly elusive. “I’ve been struggling for 42 years to make it in the [music] industry,” he states at the beginning of the new documentary bearing his name. It’s difficult to believe that someone could keep the faith for so long without becoming bitter or angry, or just giving up. Yet as Soul of America reveals, this is exactly what has happened to Charles Bradley.

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DVD Review: Comforting Skin

By Less Lee Moore

Sometimes the best horror films aren’t the ones that deal in the supernatural or killers who won’t die. Treading the line between reality and insanity can frequently be horrifying enough. Comforting Skin is that rare, unclassifiable movie that blurs the lines between genres and defies categorization.

Ostensibly, Comforting Skin is about a young woman named Koffie (Victoria Bidewell) who gets a tattoo on her shoulder blade and is thrilled with the results, until it starts talking to her. Yet, the film is about so much more.

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Blu-Ray Review: One Hour Photo

By Less Lee Moore

I saw One Hour Photo when it was released in theaters in 2002. I’ve never forgotten it.

It was the first film I saw with Robin Williams playing against type as a truly disturbed character. Even 1991’s The Fisher King was Disney compared to One Hour Photo.

Writer and director Mark Romanek cut his filmmaking teeth on music videos for Nine Inch Nails, Madonna, Michael and Janet Jackson, and Fiona Apple. With the success of filmmakers like David Fincher, the stigma of transitioning from music videos into feature films has thankfully diminished. For a first feature, One Hour Photo is astonishing, but it would still be were Romanek a veteran.

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Movie Review: ChristCORE

By Less Lee Moore

In the May 1989 issue of SPIN, born-again Christian evangelist Bob Larson followed the band Slayer on tour and presented his account in an article called “Desperately Seeking Satan.” By the end, Larson determined that Slayer’s “root of evil” was “rock’n’roll stardom” and that their “act of iniquity” was not with Satan, but with the “Billboard charts and T-shirt sales.” Still, he prayed that “both their eternal and artistic souls” would be saved.

Almost 25 years later, musician and filmmaker Justin Ludwig decided to follow two bands from perhaps an even more mystifying and misunderstood genre of music: Christian hardcore. As Ludwig explains in the beginning of the documentary, hardcore music helped him to break free from the shackles of organized religion and the oppression of conformist thinking.

If ChristCORE were a fictional Hollywood story, it’s easy to imagine that by the end, Ludwig will recant and become a born-again Christian. But, this is real life, or at least the documentary film version.

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Movie Review: I Declare War

By Brad Henderson

Regardless of your gender, I Declare War will take you back to your childhood fantasies. The film opens with children playing a war game and the rules are quickly established. These two teams are deep in the woods playing Capture The Flag, but things change when some soldiers decide to take their lives in their own hands and defy their Generals.

During the film we are sucked into their world, becoming one of them, a solider. Hiding, crawling, always on the defense, and feeling like part of the squad. Waiting for the attack and watching your friends’ backs in hopes the enemy is not lurking behind you and trying to flank your troops. This is the level of realism I Declare War presents and it holds up until the end credits roll.

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