dungeons & dragons

i watched volume 1 of this series to see if it jogged my memory. it did. i've seen some of the episodes before. despite efforts to make the d&d world come to life, the entire thing suffers from the same thing every 80s cartoon suffers from: it's out-dated. long on nostalgia but coming up short on current enjoyment. it's cheesy, it's hokey, it's simple. it's like watching thundercats for a few episodes and realizing "hey, this sucks!"

rocky balboa

what'd you expect? it's rocky. i don't recall rocky talking so much, or that he was so prone to making speeches, but it's enjoyable as any of the classic rocky films. the only big problem here was that the fight scenes sucked. half way through the final match, the editing gets weird and they start to interlace the boxing with flashbacks, scenes from earlier in the movie, and it's all just very distracting.

curse of the golden flower

apparently i watched this with a whole theater full of my countrymen. seriously, 99% of the people walking out afterwards was chinese. we chinese sure got an eyeful -- of breast. the costume "design" consisted of a lot of busty chinese women (oxymoron, i know) in tight corsets. the day-glo set design was a bit over the top and the ending a bit non-sensical, but it's another melodramatic chinese movie in the same vein as hero, house of flying daggers, etc. lots less fighting though, which didn't really detract from anything however.

charlotte's web

who didn't deeply love charlotte's web as a kid? i guess it's odd that all these children would end up in love with a spider but the power of fiction is strong. so, how hard was it to make a spider -- an icky scary creature -- lovable on-screen? well, it's easy if you rely on using julia roberts' familiar voice. roberts' was able to make charlotte more comforting than scary. not big surprises here, but no huge triumphs either. just a direct live action adaptation of a children's classic.

night at the museum

another half hopper of a movie. we probably left at just the right time, after all the animated museum bits had come to life. it was probably all downhill from there. not that it was exactly uphill before we left, but anything involving a natural history museum is slightly entertaining for me.

seeing robin williams as teddy roosevelt gave me a kick though, for some illogical reason.

happy feet

why aren't all movie theatres hoppable? they should have a one price sees all type of deal. instead i'm forced to hide and lurk and wait for attendants to stop paying attention. it's part of the fun i suppose, but then you can get stuck watching half a film (or all of it) that absolutely blows -- like this one! it's like karaoke -- and tap-araoke -- with animated penguins. terrible.

donnie brasco

did you know that this movie was slated to be made much earlier but due to the success of goodfellas in 1990 and how thematically similar the two movies were, had to be pushed back (released in 1997)? pacino and depp are on top of their game and this movie is an enjoyable dip into the mafia world.

is anne heche annoying or what? what has she done that has been good? she's like the older, more famous version of gretchen mol.

fog of war

interesting and well made, but a bit dull. i mean, it's interesting in historical context and as a film -- basically just an interview with robert mcnamara -- but you really have to know the period and the crises to really get everything out of the film. i'm not that well versed in mcnamara's legacy so it was educational to be sure, but also tepid at times.

enron: the smartest guys in the room

while superb documentaries are being made these days, (some) people are trying to do too much with them. stop the ironic music, titles, and random shots of random things. it doesn't make sense. keep the "art" out of it and just gimme the information; especially when dealing with something complex like the enron scandal. after getting the gist of what happened, the documentary quickly devolved into a bad television biography.

stranger than fiction

to be fair, i hate will ferrell; also, i only watched the back half of the movie. tragically, i watched the second half. even then, i did enjoy some of the little fight club type of screen tricks, some of the individual shots were very nice, and maggie gyllenhaal was less annoying than usual. the central conceit of the film is a great idea but executed to make people feel warm and fuzzy; which i hate.

casino royale

if this is the best of the "new" bond movies then just kill me now. the opening credits were the best part about this film and it was steadily downhill from there. okay, we get it, the daniel craig bond is muscular and manly. the poker scenes are horrific. everyone knows what texas hold'em is all about by now, do we really need some terrible dialogue about it? speaking of terrible dialogue, the whole movie is packed with it.

i was under the impression that this was a prequel of sorts. but apparently it's more of a "reset" and the previous 20 bond movies are not part of its continuity. oh, okay, now it makes sense. not.

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