Cinematical

• Review: Sukiyaki Western Django
  

  Filed under: Action, New Releases, New in Theaters, Quentin Tarantino, Cinematical Indie, Western

  By chance, two Takashi Miike movies, Dead or Alive and Audition, opened in my town with in a week of one another in 2001. It was pretty eye opening seeing the huge difference between them, the speedy carnage of the former and the slow suspense of the latter, and I became an instant fan. Since then I've managed to track down just six more Miike movies, and in that same time he has made over forty (including videos and TV shows). The speed of his production fits...
  



• Review: Space Chimps
  

  Filed under: Animation, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews, New in Theaters, Family Films

  Imagine you're a filmmaker and you've got this cockamamie story about astronaut chimps that just won't go away. You don't have much money, but the story involves lots of technology and outer space effects. What do you do? You could use your imagination and shoot in darkness with lots of odd angles and perspectives, like Mario Bava's sci-fi masterpiece Planet of the Vampires (1965). But that would raise all kinds of questions about how to present the chimps. You could do a hand-drawn animated cartoon, something like Persepolis, for comparatively...
  



• Discuss: Should 'Hellboy II' Serve as Del Toro's Audition Tape?
  

  Filed under: Action, Classics, Drama, Foreign Language, Horror, Casting, New Releases, New Line, Celebrities and Controversy, Fandom, New in Theaters, Family Films, Comic/Superhero/Geek

  "While waiting in line for the screening of Hellboy II: The Golden Army, I overhead someone say that Guillermo del Toro's latest is being seen as his audition tape for The Hobbit," observed Jonathan Pacheco in his review for The House Next Door. Of course, Del Toro already had the directing gigs for the...
  



• Review: Garden Party
  

  Filed under: Drama, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews, New in Theaters, Cinematical Indie

  
  
  Jason Freeland's Garden Party plays a bit like Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), taking a look at a cross-section of Los Angeles characters, though it runs less than half the length and, conversely, half the depth. The movie also reminded me a little of that early scene in Billy Wilder's Sabrina (1954), wherein the titular heroine secretly watches a swank Los Angeles party from a safe distance, imagining what it must be like to be there. Likewise, sophomore writer/director Freeland (Brown's RequiemNew Releases, New Line, Theatrical Reviews, New in Theaters, Family Films, Picturehouse

  

  If you have a girl between the ages of 4 and 12 in your life, chances are pretty good you've heard of American Girl. The wildly successful franchise has spawned a whole series of high-end dolls, doll clothes, doll furniture and accessories, books, cookbooks ... and, of course, movies. American Girls are enormously popular with both girls and parents seeking a wholesome alternative to the freakishly-thin Barbie doll image or the hooker-in-training look of those wretched Bratz dolls. As an added bonus, they encourage girls to learn a little history, without even...
  




• Review: Hancock -- Kim's Take
  

  Filed under: Action, Drama, Romance, New Releases, Sony, Theatrical Reviews, New in Theaters, Comic/Superhero/Geek

  

  I wanted to go into Hancockknowing as little as possible, so I deliberately avoided reading anything about it -- at least, as much as that was possible given the amount of movie blog reading I do on a daily basis. Nonetheless, it was hard to miss that early reviews trickling in from places like Variety and Hollywood Reporter were not, shall we say, overly positive. On the other hand, several of those reviews were written by people who often seem to have cinematic tastes...
  




• Review: WALL·E
  

  Filed under: Animation, New Releases, Disney, Theatrical Reviews, New in Theaters, Family Films

  
  
  It's hundreds of years from now, practically no life (save for a cockroach) remains on the giant garbage dump that's become Earth, and, funnily enough, the only remaining sign of humanity can be found inside the planet's last functional robot: a trash collector (and compactor) named WALL·E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class). It's been roughly 700 years since humans last populated Earth, and in that time WALL·E has wasted away doing what he was originally programmed for: collect, compact and pile trash so that it's out of the way.

  However, over...
  




• Review: Encounters at the End of the World
  

  Filed under: Documentary, New Releases, ThinkFilm, Theatrical Reviews, New in Theaters, Cinematical Indie

  

  Early in Werner Herzog's unique, striking new documentary Encounters at the End of the World, the great German filmmaker reminds us that this will not be another movie about penguins. Spoken in Herzog's familiar rich, ironic drone, the line gets a big laugh, but it also brings up a good point. Does the inclusion of Herzog's personal interests make this a better movie than March of the Penguins? And, ultimately, what do we really expect from a documentary?

  Let's look at these questions a little...
  




• Review: The Happening
  

  Filed under: Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Mystery & Suspense, Theatrical Reviews, New in Theaters, 20th Century Fox

  
  
  In the Hollywood variation on a classic proverb, whom the gods would destroy they first make successful. So it's been for writer director M. Night Shyamalan, where the breakout success of The Sixth Sense first suggested he could do no wrong and then his later films suggested, in dribs and drabs, that he in fact could. The minor missteps in the otherwise-watchable Unbreakable, Signs and The Village were one thing; eventually, Shyamalan's status as a unquestionable talent culminated in Lady in the Water, a textbook...
  



• Interview: Tim Roth
  

  Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Fandom, New in Theaters, Interviews, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels

  
  
  In The Incredible Hulk, long-time character actor Tim Roth leaps onto summer's biggest stage as Emil Blonsky, a soldier brought in by General Ross (William Hurt) to hunt down Bruce Banner and bring him back alive. But when Blonsky learns that Banner isn't "just another fugitive," he begins to want the kind of power Banner has hidden deep within. Yet, with that power comes a very large price -- and if he's not careful enough, Blonsky could end...