Tag Archives: Movies

Mini-Review 2: Forks Over Knives

Those who know me know that I am a meat eater. I love a good steak, well cooked chicken, or moist tasty chops, so to find myself watching a film about the advantages of a vegetarian diet was quite surprising.

The premise of the film is that the Western diet, heavy in animal material, is bad in terms of health outcomes for people, leading to diabetes, heart disease, and cancers, and that a diet based on plants yields better outcomes. To support the premise the filmmakers utilized a number of lines of evidence.Primarily two medical doctors who have been researching this line of thought for years, the doctor’s patient’s as case studies, and large population studies, particularly in the east as diet there has changed from one based on traditional meals heavy in plants to one more like the west and heavy in meats, and dairy.

Continue reading →

Sunday Night Movie:Tremors

Last night I was in a feel good kind of mood, so I avoided the more serious dramas and genre films for the much lighter, but highly entertaining 1990 movie Tremors.

Tremors is not a horror film; it is a monster movie. It is a monster movie that winks an eye at the long tradition of monster movies, gleefully ditching certain aspects, such as a tedious set-up that explains the monsters, and retains what made the best monster films work, a delightful lack of cynicism. Continue reading →

James Bond in the 21st Century

This short little essay will have some slight spoilers for the newest Bond film, ‘Skyfall,’ so precede if you don’t mind that minor aspect of my prattling.

James bond has been around for quite a while, the novel that started the franchise, Casino Royale was published in 1953 and inspired film spanning from 1962 with ‘Dr. No’ to this year’s entry ‘Skyfall’. The world has been through a lot of changes over those decades. Enemies have vanished from the globe – Soviet what? — and technology has made earlier gee-whiz gadget seem down right Neolithic. Bond as a character has made a few adaptation with the changing times. The man’s man drinking and sleeping his way through a bevy of beauties has become a colder character, less given to quips when killed. However it is one exchange, one line in ‘Skyfall’ that shows that the world has truly changed and Bond along with it.

In the film Bond has been captured by bad guy Silva and finds himself tied, again, to chair. This time he’s allowed to keep his clothes, unlike that unsetting scene from 2006’s Casino Royale. Silva, carrying a fair amount of personal animosity for Bond and his boss M, tries to upset his captive with some very explicit homoerotic foreplay. The scenes is sexually charged and suddenly changes when Bond says, “What makes you think this is my first time?” (And a million fanfics are born)

Either Bond lied to throw off Silva’s game, or Bond’s sexually experience is wider than what has been traditionally represented. No matter which is ‘true’, how meaningless that term is for any fiction, the importance is massive.

For most of American culture, historically effeminate natures, and homosexuality has been associated with this, have been seen as weak and unmanly. To be a man in western culture, certainly for the twentieth century, has meant to be strong and to be heterosexual without and wavering. (Or as they put it in the satire Rustler’s Rhapsody to be a good guy you had to be ‘a confident heterosexual.’ heterosexual was not enough)

If Bond is lying, he’s open and accepting enough to have people think he might have had trysts with other men. He doesn’t see it as something that weakens his standing as an alpha male. If it is true, he’s accepting that his tastes, or at least experiences, in bed as only one aspect to who he is and that there is nothing shameful in open mindedness.

What is more interesting is that the filmmakers were willing to go there. It’s one thing for an art house release to have male characters of non-standard sexual orientation, or secondary characters in major films, but to have your principle action stare, a defining action hero of the last 50 years identified that way would have been just a few years ago forbidden. It simply would not have been prudent to risk all that money by inviting the controversy that the character might have had sex with another man. Unimportant to the story, lose it and save the box office would have been the commandment from the studio. Not in ‘Skyfall.’

We are in a different world now. A more open a more accepting world. I welcome it.

Blu-ray Review: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

I do enjoy my Netflix account. It allows me to see films that I was unwilling or hesitant to view in the theaters and MI: Ghost Protocol is a perfect example of this effect.

I really enjoyed the first MI film, skipped the second, and found the third one entertaining, but not solid enough to entice me to buy it or see it’s sequel when it was released.

Ghost Protocol is a difficult film to discuss because it seems to exit in its own unique genre space. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Dredd 3D

Way back in the mists of time, the 1980’s, there was a subversive British comic book called Judge Dredd. Set in an apocalyptic post-nuclear world of MegaCity 1, it was a boo about police states, crime, and judgement. Violent, satirical, and uncompromising it was a cult hit.

In 1995 a film veriosn was released upon the world – apparently we did pull off all five sacrifices properly that year – with Stallone as Judge Dredd, and aside from some of the art direction, nothing of the book survived into the horrid screenplay or onto the screen.

Now we have a second attempt at translating the world of MegaCity 1 to the big screen, an adaptation that doesn’t not rely on big names, or huge budget, but instead tries hewing closer to the intent of the original stories. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Iron Sky

Odds are very much against anyone reading my blog will get a chance to see this film projected in a theater. This was a small independent production from filmmakers in Finland and the US release is very limited. (So far just one single showing in San Diego. One evening one time.) Go to Tugg.com to find were it is showing in the U.S.
Some of you may have heard your humble author and host praise a fan film “Star Wreck: In The Pirkenning.” This is the first professional feature film from the people behind that spectacular parody of Star Trek vs Babylon 5. Last night my lovely sweetie-wife and I drove about twenty miles to catch the single San Diego presentation of Iron Sky and it was worth every stop light and the long night it made for us both. Continue reading →

Political Thoughts from The Dark Knight Rises

So on Sunday morning a friend and I went to see the final film in director Christopher Nolan’s Batman saga. I came away impressed and ready to add the film to my collection. (Seriously had then been a blu-ray for sale in the lobby it would have come home with me.)

There has been a lot of talk recently about the politics of this movie. A great deal of it surrounding the homonym Bane and Bain, but really that is just the nattering of negligible minds. There are interesting political dimensions to the plot and story of The Dark Knight Rises, far beyond simple coincidence over names.

There are some light spoilers ahead, so if that bothers you, go see the movie then come back. Continue reading →

A Successful Third Act, my review of: The Dark Knight Rises

This weekend has been a weekend of Batman for me. Saturday morning I sat down and watched my Blu-ray of Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan’s epic and fantastic reboot of the Batman franchise. Sunday night I watched The Dark Knight, completing a trilogy watch, albeit out of order.

My plan had been to watch both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight on Saturday and on Sunday morning go watch The Dark Knight Rises, but the length of the films involved and other activities meant I only watched Batman Begins.

The Dark Knight Rises is not just the third film on the serious, until other third films, Goldfinger for James Bond, The Search For Spock for the Star Trek Franchise, and Son of Frankenstein, this film really is the final act of the Batman story. Too many times I have watched a film go off the rail and crash in the third act, not so with The Dark Knight Rises.

I will discuss spoiler material from the first two films, it’s been four years since The Dark Knight, and I shall try not to be spoilerific for this newest and final installment. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Prometheus

So, 30 years after his last SF film, visionary director Ridley Scott has returned the genre he so deeply marked in the late 70s and early 80s with his films Alien and Blade Runner. The thing about Ridley Scott is he can not tell a terrible script from a wonderful script. If you hand him a wonderful script you are likely to get a piece of cinema that will be breath taking in it style and in it substance. If you hand him a poor script, you are likely to get a watchable but ultimately pointless film such asKingdomOfHeaven, and if you give him a crappy script, you will get junk that looks like gold.

Sadly, Prometheus falls into the final category, a visually stunning, conceptually audacious, but ultimately an epic failure in terms of character, plot, and logic. I saw Prometheus in 2-D, and this is the only time I have regretted skipping the 3-D format. Scott used the frame with all the mastery of a visual master at the top of his form, some scenes I expect would have truly stunned me in 3-D, but they would have not saved this film. Continue with the review knowing that you will be spoiled.