Having just started a Netflix subscription, I decided to take advantage of the "Watch it Now!" option which was a major reason for my purchasing decision. Although the current offerings are somewhat limited, there are nonetheless several decent movies in the offering. One of those movies was "The Motorcycle Diaries". Based on Che Guevara's early travels throughout South America, "The Motorcycle Diaries" is somewhat of a Latin "On the Road" with a moral conscious, and without the self serving ...
I watched Hollywoodland last week. It begs comparison to the other recent, true-but-unsolved-crime period piece, The Black Dahlia . It's a favorable comparison for the former film. Black Dahlia stars Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart (two actors I've never really cared for) as L.A. cops and Scarlett Johannson as the third point of their love triangle. Ostensibly, it's a move about the murder of the lady posthumously referred to as "The Black Dahlia," one Elizabeth Short; Short was killed i...
Before I say anything else, this is NOT a historic account of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. You want to see history? Go get The Civil War by Ken Burns. That's an accurate historical documentary. This isn't even BASED off the historic Battle of Thermopylae. This is based on a graphic novel based off an old movie based off someone else's loose retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae. Add in the fact that it's Frank Miller's graphic novel, and well.. it's not for everyone. That s...
I should first point out that I had a certain bias against this movie long before I saw it. Why? Daniel Craig strikes me as a poor choice of physical type to play the character of James Bond. It was the production company's decision to terminate Pierce Brosnan's tenure in the role, and frankly, I don't see why. Brosnan, who had been considered for the role many years earlier, finally was available after Timothy Dalton's run, and he was easily as good as any of the previous actors. The Brosna...
I just returned the Hellboy: Sword of Storms DVD to Netflix. In many ways, I found the movie to be superior to the live-action version. The characters felt very similar, thanks to the fact that the filmmakers hired most of the same actors for the animated movie. The story seemed to flow much more naturally than in the live-action film, probably because this story was written specifically for this medium and this movie. I have commented previously in this space about how I felt the live-ac...
New to DVD in the past week was a documentary film that was released on DVD. It's a film that got virtually no advertising, little press, and a complete lack of marketing presence -- because of the NC-17 rating the film was saddled with. The film: This Film is Not Yet Rated . (Linked to Netflix listing for the film. Amazon.com also sells the movie: here .) Why an NC-17 rating? That's part of the irony of the movie. The movie is all about the MPAA's rating system a...
"Europe, among them France, has become underdeveloped due to acute economic and political crisis while Africa has gone through very thriving development. As Olivier and Pauline, a French engineer and a French teacher, can no more decently live in their country, they decide to immigrate into the United States of Africa. Unfortunately they don’t manage to get an entry visa and therefore call on a smuggler. From that time on their life turns upside down and they face the grim reality of...
Over the weekend I saw some headlines and articles pointing out problems with the new movie " Flags of Our Fathers " which had opened this past weekend. If you've been living under a rock and have no idea what Flags... is about, the movie is based on a book by the son of a participant in the events at Iwo Jima, specifically about the flag raising at Iwo Jima that was depicted in an infamous photograph that later was turned into the monument at the Marine Corps memorial showing the same even...
I went out today to see the new movie Flyboys . A friend and I had been interested in seeing it since seeing some trailers for it over the last several weeks and with it opening yesterday, we took the opportunity to catch it this morning at one of the matinee shows. I have some complaints about the length of the movie, and about not being able to see the star of the movie without thinking he was going to go off looking for Spiderman to avenge his father's death, but over all it was an ...