How many times have you seen ‘Inception?’ (Movie review)
2010 finally has its first great movie, and it’s Christopher Nolan’s “Inception.” That shouldn’t be surprising since — now that I think about it — I’ve liked every one of the writer-director’s films: the backward “Memento,” the thriller “Insomnia,” the period-piece magic show “The Prestige,” and the two “Batman” reboot movies. (I actually think “The Dark Knight” is his weakest entry; certainly it’s his most overrated, but
Happy 30th anniversary to ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ (Movie commentary)
On Friday, “The Empire Strikes Back” marks its 30th anniversary. That’s right, 30 years ago, the movie industry was capable of putting out a Memorial Day weekend blockbuster that people wanted to see and that was not only worth the price of admission, but was so good that we’d talk about it 30 years later. “The Empire
‘Sherlock Holmes’ has lots of style, but it’s hard to care (Movie review)
I don’t understand these movies that put so much effort into making it look great, and then seem to expend so little effort on plot and characters. “Sherlock Holmes” (2009) is one of those movies — from the opening shot of a horse-and-carriage chase down a dim London street, it looks incredible; it reminds me of that
James Cameron takes humanity to task in the breathtaking ‘Avatar’ (Movie review)
Twenty-five years ago in “The Terminator,” James Cameron worried that technology would spell the end of mankind. In his subsequent films, he continued to mull our arrogance about what we create. In “Aliens,” we had the weaponry, but still, our best soldiers were barely a match for the aliens. In “The Abyss,” we didn’t know
‘An Education’ doesn’t teach us anything new (Movie review)
“An Education” is one of those movies that I can acknowledge is good, yet I didn’t particularly like it. This is because I’m starting to develop a low tolerance for watching supposedly new movies that I feel like I’ve seen many times before.
Aliens-vs.-humans thriller ‘District 9’ lives up to the hype (Movie review)
“District 9,” which immediately earns a spot among modern sci-fi classics, started off as a “Halo” video game adaptation. When that fell through, the filmmakers decided to make something cooler.
6th ‘Harry Potter’ film is a beautiful work of art — and sometimes it’s even a bit funny (Movie review)
J.K. Rowling did her best writing on “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” and the filmmakers rise to her level to make the series’ best film by far. When a much-loved piece of literature is adapted to film, I sometimes worry that the filmmakers will try so hard to get it right that the end product will
Maybe ‘The Phantom Menace’ was ‘just a movie’ after all (Commentary)
Ten years ago today, I was waiting in a sun-drenched line at West Acres Cinema in Fargo, N.D., to buy a ticket for the midnight debut of “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace,” a movie that was supposed to change cinema as we knew it. One could make a case that it succeeded,
The new ‘Star Trek’ is actually kind of cool (Movie review)
Director J.J. Abrams makes “Star Trek” respectable again with this origin tale that sets up everything we’ve seen in six TV series — I’m including the underappreciated cartoon — and 10 movies. (Well, “Enterprise” takes place before this, but who’s counting?) He also makes “Star Trek” cool for the first time. I smiled a lot during this movie, and