Movie Review - The Box
I would not, could not like The Box
Based on Richard Matheson’s short story Button, Button, The Box stars Cameron Diaz and James Marsden as Norma and Arthur Lewis. The Lewis’ are an upper middleclass couple; she’s an English teacher at an upscale prep school while he works at NASA with hopes of entering their astronaut program. However, their idyllic live begins to unravel when he is passed over as a potential astronaut and she is informed that faculty members will no longer receive discounted tuition for their children. In the midst of this upheaval they are presented with an unusual opportunity. A man arrives on their doorstep with a box and an offer. The box is nothing more than that; a wood box with a button on top. Press the button and receive a million dollars. Oh, but there is one caveat: someone somewhere, whom you don’t know, will die. Will they press the button? Will they not press the button? At the risk of revealing too much, one of those choices would make for an extremely anticlimactic (not to mention brief) film going experience, now wouldn’t it?
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Movie Review - Disney's A Christmas Carol
Disney meets Dickens
First and foremost, people need to know that this is a ghost story. Don’t forget that the original title of the Charles Dickens classic was A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Decades of diluted adaptations featuring the likes The Jetsons, Elmo and Xena: Warrior Princess have caused people to forget just how macabre this story actually is. And, seeing as how it stars Jim Carrey and has the “Disney” logo plastered on every piece of marketing material, it would be easy to believe that Disney’s A Christmas Carol would be yet another in a long line of watered-down takes on the holiday classic. Nothing could be further from the truth.
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Movie Review - The Men Who Stare at Goats
I wish I had stared at goats instead
"More of this is true than you would believe," we are warned at the beginning of The Men Who Stare at Goats. Which is a roundabout way to say “based on a true story” without having to be bound by any real facts. The story purports to tell us the story of Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) a reporter for a midsize newspaper who falls into the story of his life while reporting on the Iraq War. He desperately wants to make his way from Kuwait and into Iraq but, unable to find a way in, is instead languishing in his hotel’s bar. It is here that he comes upon Lyn Cassady (George Clooney). Lyn is a former Army man who claims to have been in a Special Forces unit whose sole purpose was to harness the power of the paranormal for patriotic purposes. They were trained in the art of cloud bursting, walking through walls, mind control and the aforementioned “goat staring” (which was a means by which they would stop their hearts).
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Movie Review - The Fourth Kind
Close Encounters Of The Turd Kind
The Fourth Kind claims to be “based on actual case studies” of psychologist Abbey Tyler. The film begins with Milla Jovovich telling us that she’ll be playing the role of Tyler while the film will also show us “actual” footage of the “real” Tyler and her patients. Tyler is practicing in Nome, Alaska when she begins to notice a common theme among her patients: they’re all being awoken at 3:30am to the site of an owl, an overwhelming since of dread and gaps in their memories. Using hypnosis she attempts to fill in those gaps. But problems arise when her methods result in depression and extreme panic, culminating with one of her patients killing his family before turning the gun on himself. The film views this as tragic but since they won’t have to watch the rest of this movie, I prefer to think of them as lucky. But I’m a glass-half-full kinda guy.
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Movie Review - Antichrist
Can you go to Hell for seeing a movie?
Can you go to Hell for seeing a movie? If so, it’s too late for me but you still have a chance. Written and directed by Lars von Trier, Antichrist is the most perplexing movie I’ve ever seen, let alone reviewed. Visually stunning yet repulsive to watch; psychologically intense yet morally reprehensible; a spectacular cinematic achievement that quite possibly should be seen by no one. The film tells the story of He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg). (You know you’re in highbrow “art house” territory when the characters’ names are pronouns.) They are a married couple; he’s a psychologist, she’s an author. In the opening scene, their toddler dies as a result of their inattention whilst engaged in “marital relations.” The scene is beautifully filmed, bathed in blue light and perfectly edited to the strains of 'Lascia ch'io pianga' from 'Rinaldo' and climaxes (both literally and figuratively) in the death of their child. Hang on to your hats, folks…this is as “cheery” as it’s gonna get.
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