cinema reviews
There’s No Place Like D’OH!!!
August 14th, 2007
The Simpsons Movie by James Harleman The funniest part of The Simpsons movie may be the opening, when frustrated father Homer Simpson groans over watching a movie that is essentially a big screen version of what you can see at home on TV. This self-awareness sets up the movie nicely, also setting the level of [...]
Read More...Vanity and Lost Sleep, Demons and Fate, Cannibalism and the Cross
July 28th, 2007
Hey, didn’t you teach or write about that one movie that one time…? Teaching Film and Theology for years, and contributing reviews to several websites, people have been asking if these reviews would ever find their way onto Cinemagogue. So, I’ll periodically be slogging through the old hard drive and placing these in archival form [...]
Read More...More than Meets the Eye…
July 5th, 2007
More than two decades after Hasbro, Takara, Sunbow and Marvel Comics combined forces, to unleash the most successful, holistic, cartoon/comic/vehicle/puzzle/robot marketing campaigns ever known to man, creating a towering titan of revenue that has ebbed and flowed for decades, Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg have taken the steel-reinforced franchise one step further with a crowd-pleasing, comedic [...]
Read More...Sometimes Truth…
June 21st, 2007
Is your life a comedy or a tragedy? When Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) hears the narrator of his life while brushing his teeth, he panics with the realization that his fate may not be his own. What ensues is a fascinating character study of a tax collector looking at his life – his time, his [...]
Read More...Fantastic Chore
June 17th, 2007
In 2005, I subjected myself to the Fantastic Bore… watching Jessica Alba failing to act intelligent, while Ioan Gruffudd and Michael Chiklis looked around nervously, hoping no one would notice them as they collected a nice paycheck; the charming Julian McMahon smirked his way through a doomed role that was both poorly written and miscast, appearing [...]
Read More...Illusion of Good Intentions
June 7th, 2007
I keep expecting director Christopher Nolan to swing and miss. He gave us a stirring Memento, wrestled with Insomnia, ensured that Batman Begins, and capped things off with The Prestige, my pick for greatest film of 2006. (In 2008, he’ll give us the next Bat-installment with The Dark Knight.) This 37 year old Brit not only seems to [...]
Read More...The Story of Story…
April 14th, 2007
“I wanted to believe, more than most I wanted to be like a child again.” Cleveland Heep discovers that beyond the veil of his mundane and humdrum life is a world of myth and fantasy, a true myth that overlies his own, a spiritual world with great consequence to our lives, to our future. Overlooked [...]
Read More...“If you ain’t first, you’re last” – Ricky Bobby
March 28th, 2007
It was a joy and pleasure to discuss the deep spiritual implications of Talledega Nights: The Ballard of Ricky Bobby last month in North Seattle. Yes, I’m serious. This movie helps illustrate why we laugh along with comedy, how many of us pray to our own personal Jesus, and how so many of us listen [...]
Read More...I predict… disappointment.
March 19th, 2007
Premonition Director: Mennan Yapo Cast: Sandra Bullock, Julian McMahon TriStar Pictures, 2007 Rated: PG-13 According to Webster’s Dictionary, a premonition is “previous notice or advance warning”. If only Sandra Bullock had received such notice before signing on to star in this Jenga-like movie that crumples under its own internal logic. Better yet, if only I’d [...]
Read More...Come and Get Them…
March 11th, 2007
In 480 B.C., Leonidas and his 300 Spartans sacrificed themselves to buy time for the Greeks as an army of Persians beyond count sought to conquer the lands. Over time, the story has become legend; I actually passed through Thermopylae Pass on a trip through Greece, where the Spartans fell in battle for their families, [...]
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