12/29/07:  "So, it's come to this.  The Alien franchise has been one of the greatest in sci-fi history, starting with Ridley Scott's seminal horror classic, followed by James Cameron's immortally kick-ass Aliens and David Fincher's underrated Alien 3 (which, admittedly, managed to blow up the franchise with its' apocalyptically gloomy climax).  The bland “Poseidon Adventure with Monsters” Alien Resurrection seemed to be the final nail in the Alien coffin.  Meanwhile, John McTiernan's 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Predator introduced a memorably cool monster who returned in the exciting Stephen Hopkins sequel Predator 2, a box office flop.  While the rest of the world moved on, comic book and video game companies hit on the same idea Universal Studios did during their monster heyday:  if a couple of creatures can no longer sell tickets on their own, make 'em fight!  And soon enough, Hollywood got on the Alien vs. Predator bandwagon with the enjoyably junky 2004 movie of the same name.  While it lacked the starpower or ambition of its' predecessors, at least it had cool monsters, relatable human characters, and a show-stopping action climax full of sound and fury.  For their follow-up, 20th Century Fox has taken the next page from the Universal Monsters playbook;  cut the budget! " MORE

3/4/07:  "So, where does your historical knowledge come from?  Yeah, we all picked some up in high school and maybe college, and every once in a while there really is nothing better on TV than that Revolutionary War documentary on The History Channel.  But when it comes to fleshing out my understanding of what all has happened in the last 300 years or so, I'd be nowhere without the movies.  I like seeing the movie first, then heading off to the Internet to confirm how much of what I've just been “taught” is true (for instance, in the case of Jet Li's Fearless... none).  Having done all that, I am pleased to announce that Amazing Grace, the story of British Parliamentarian William Wilberforce's 20-year campaign to end the slave trade in England, is a quality, mostly accurate history lesson.  While a little long and respectful to a fault, it's also very well acted and its' heart is all kinds of in the right place.

The movie has an awkward structure that begins around the end of the second act.  Around the turn of the 19th Century, abolitionist William Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd) is at the end of his rope.  Branded a seditionist for his anti-slavery beliefs, beaten down by over a decade of failed attempts to pass a ban on the slave trade in Parliament, and in declining health, he visits with friends to recuperate and meets his future wife Barbara Spooner (Romola Garai)."  MORE

11/3/07:  "Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe are two of our finest actors, but they come at it from entirely different angles.  Crowe is the leading man as character actor, trying out whatever accents, mannerisms, postures and look the role requires.  Washington is a Movie Star, a charismatic force of nature around whom movies shape themselves.  Sometimes he's good, sometimes he's evil, but he's always Denzel Washington, dominating the screen with his unparalleled confidence.  The two have met on-screen before, in the nifty 1995 curiosity Virtuosity, where Washington played a tormented cop up against a computerized composite serial killer named SID 6.7 (Crowe, having a psychotic ball in one of his first Hollywood roles).  Twelve years later, the roles are reversed, and American Gangster finds Crowe as the cop and Washington as real-life New York heroin king Frank Lucas.  Reuniting with his Gladiator (and, sadly A Good Year) director Ridley Scott, the former Maximus is completely convincing as a 70's New York Cop, while Denzel one-ups his Oscar-winning Training Day villainy by making Lucas one of the most terrifying movie characters in a long time."  MORE

1/4/07:  "Unless you simply don't plan to, it's probably better that we don't have this conversation until you've seen the peculiar combo of Terrence Malick and Jean-Claude Van Damme movie Mel Gibson has made about the declining days of the Mayan Empire.  Consisting of four fairly distinct sections, each progressively more interesting than the one before it, Apocalypto is a difficult movie to discuss without SPOILERS.  So, consider yourself warned.

Still there?

Cool.

Since we're just getting to know each other here at The Palace, I'll let you know up front that I'm not the kind of moviegoer who's all that concerned with what kind of guy Mel Gibson is in real life or what strange ideas might be kicking around in his head.  I'll leave viewing Apocalypto through that kind of prism for others.  What's actually up on the screen is an ultra-violent historical action movie that is equal parts snoozy and electrifying, but by the end, I was glad I saw it."  MORE

11/1/08:  "There are several genres that seem to lock a storyteller into a finite number of possible stories.  Right up there with police thrillers among the most limiting is the Western.  Cowboys, Indians, corrupt ranchers, faithful sheriffs, vengeful gunmen, damsels in distress... the key to a successful Western isn't re-inventing the wheel:  that's pretty much impossible.  It's arranging those pieces in just the right order to serve as a platform for memorable characters.  Appaloosa, the new Ed Harris labor of love based on a novel by Robert B. Parker, does something even more interesting.  While its' characters do indeed occupy a familiar Western setting and face the elements of a familiar Western plot, they crackle with life that they seem to be free of it, able to make decisions and dodge some (although not all) of the pitfalls cliché often turns into destiny.  So, while I've seen more than my share of lawman vs. Rancher Who Believes He's Above the Law stories, I'd never seen one quite like Appaloosa.

Virgil Cole (Ed Harris) and Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen) are traveling lawmen with a simple business plan.  If your town's in trouble, hire them to become The Law, sign over basically all legal authority to them, and once they've cleaned things up, it's on to the next job."  MORE

4/7/07:  "Something very strange is happening in Are We Done Yet?, the sequel to the 2005 hit Are We There Yet?, and it's not the fact that Columbia Pictures decided to remake the Cary Grant classic Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House as a sequel to an unrelated movie.  Well, that is pretty strange, but even stranger is the fact that 95% of the inspiration both behind and in front of the camera is invested in a single supporting character who didn't appear in either There or Blandings.

Six months after the events of Are We There Yet?, Nick (Ice Cube) and Suzanne (Nia Long) are married and living in his small apartment with her kids Lindsey (Aleisha Allen) and Kevin (Philip Bolden).  Nick's sold his sporting goods store and is pursuing his dream of starting his own magazine, and thanks to a large advance he's received toward the first issue, he can afford to move his new family into their own house.  Out in the country, they're charmed by a house sold to them by Realtor Chuck (John C. McGinley).  Chuck tells them there's work to be done on the house and gives them the number of a good contractor, but Nick wants to do the work himself.  Once the entire electrical system blows out, he's got to call that contractor, who is... Chuck."  MORE

12/16/08:  "We've got blockbusters to give us explosions, alien invasions and superstars, so we ask the independent film to give us the opposite end of the spectrum:  characters and situations we can really relate to, particularly marginalized characters Hollywood wouldn't see much financial upside in presenting.  I have to admit I don't connect with indie characters as often as I'd like.  These days, “independent film” is as likely to simply promise a different kind of commercially viable artifice instead.  But ...Around is the real deal, leaning on a phenomenal star turn by up-and-comer Rob Evans to spend four occasionally painful years in the company of a man on a moving journey of self-discovery.  Its' low budget financed on credit cards by debuting writer/director David Spaltro, there are some rough edges to this New York-shot indie, but it absolutely gripped me, and I really can't say enough about that lead performance."  MORE

2/26/07:  "These are troubling times.  Poll after poll shows that the majority of Americans believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction.  Negativity seems to be everywhere around us.  It gets candidates elected, sells papers, gets people to watch the news and makes for the best office gossip.  If ever there was a time for a great movie about the triumph of a simple man's dreams over the vast political and corporate forces that oppose them, that time is now.  Alas, as desperately as The Astronaut Farmer wants to be that movie, it's not.  The pieces are there, but the characters just don't live in that same troubling world we do.

Charlie Farmer (Billy Bob Thorton) could have been an astronaut, but dropped out of the space program after his father's death and took over the family farm.  It's gnawed at him all these years, a dream to go into space that's led him to build a rocket in his barn.  Wife Audie (Virginia Madsen), son Shepard (Max Thieriot) and daughters Stanley (Jasper Polish) and Sunshine (Logan Polish) are 100% on board, but there's a certain vague sense that it'll never really happen.  That all changes one day at the bank, when Charlie learns that with all the money he's diverted into his own personal space program, the ax of foreclosure will fall on his farm within a month.  It's now or never."  MORE

1/24/08:  "There's a certain kind of movie that only, it seems, pops up at this time of year.  British people in period costumes inflict offenses upon each other that modern people (even English ones) likely wouldn't find that big of a deal, but honor is sullied, lives are ruined and Oscars are won.  I freely admit to prejudging Atonement as a costume drama snoozer and purchasing a ticket only because it won the Golden Globe for Best Picture-Drama.  About fifteen minutes in, as well-dressed, wealthy Brits sun themselves while exchanging banal conversation, I dearly regretted that purchase.  But Joe Wright's film version of Ian McEwan's revered novel has one trick after another up its' sleeves, and slowly pulled me into its' dense inner world.  One of the best jobs I've ever seen of putting a character's tortured mental process on screen, Atonement positively squirms with its' own unease... as would you, if you were inside the head of Briony Tallis, who at the age of 13 did a very bad thing.  One she can never take back.

It's 1935 and all is sunshine and wealth at the estate of the Tallis family.  Of particular concern to us are their two daughters, Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and little Briony (Saoirse Ronan), both of whom are in love, in their own way, with the housekeeper's son, Robbie Turner (James McAvoy)."  MORE

11/18/07:  "Generally speaking, I think there are two ways to watch a movie:  sentimentally or cynically.  The sentimental viewer sees fate where the cynic sees only contrivance.  The sentimentalist demands that the movie “feel” right while the cynic demands that it be logical.  And the sentimental viewer cries a lot.  Unsure which category you fall into?  Check out August Rush, as good a litmus test as has ever been committed to film.  A magical tale of how one separated family's love of music creates a harmonic convergence that pulls them all toward each other, its' plot engines are exclusively emotional and cannot be explained other than to say they made me cry so long and so loud that it's taken Pole Position in the race for the best movie of the year.

We first meet young Evan Taylor (Freddie Highmore) in a field listening to the wind and the wheat blowing around him and conducting it all like a symphony.  He's a musical prodigy of the highest order, but he's also an orphan, and obsessed with the notion that the music he “hears” in his head would allow his parents to find him if they could only hear him play it.  In flashbacks, we meet those parents, cellist Lyla Novacek (Keri Russell) and rock guitarist/singer Louis Connelly (Jonathan Rhys Meyers).  Eleven years ago, they met at a party and spent a night of passion on a rooftop listing to the music of the city."  MORE

11/30/08:  "Confession:  trying to prepare for the 2002 Oscar ceremony, I rented Baz Luhrmann's widely praised box office hit Moulin Rouge!.  I shut off the tape after roughly 20 minutes, so tortured by the movie's utter self-amusement and seeming intent to trigger an epileptic seizure in all susceptible viewers that I could bear no more (it ranks alongside the 1994 bomb Radioland Murders as the only two films I've ever rented but been unable to bring myself to finish).  I had no interest in checking out Luhrmann's two earlier films (William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and Strictly Ballroom, also both well regarded) and on the basis of his long-gestating Moulin follow-up Australia, I feel safe in concluding the the Australian auteur is very, very far from my cup of tea.  A stylistically ambitious but seemingly pointless and definitely painful attempt to create a late-30's-style Hollywood epic about his home country's shameful racial past and entry into World War 2, Australia manages to capture all the weaknesses of Gone With the Wind-era Hollywood filmmaking and none of its' strengths.  The next time someone tells me they don't make 'em like they used to, I'll point to Australia and say there are some pretty good reasons for that."  MORE