Celluloid Heroes

The Searchers (1956)

Paul — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 07:14:56 PST

You speak good American for a Comanch. Somebody teach ya? John Ford’s The Searchers is a movie in desperate search for an identity. For every aspect that is excellent, two more make you want to cringe. The film seems to have feet in two eras. Its ambivalent attitude toward the stereotypical treatment of Native Americans seems [...]

Patrick McGoohan (1928-2009)

Paul — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:17:10 PST

Celluloid Heroes also pauses to remember Patrick McGoohan, star of the great British TV series, The Prisoner. His movie career was long and varied as well, including Ice Station Zebra, Silver Streak and Braveheart.

Ricardo Montalban (1920-2009)

Paul — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:11:42 PST

Celluloid Heroes pauses to remember Ricardo Montalban, who died today at the age of 88. He was, of course, most famous to television viewers for Fantasy Island and extolling the virtues of “Soft Corinthian leather,” but to this moviegoer, he will always be Khan Noonian Singh in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and [...]

WALL-E (2008)

Paul — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:27:48 PST

I didn’t know we had a pool! I think I’ve discovered at least one of the secrets of Pixar’s exasperatingly consistent excellence. Many movies are so desperately eager to dazzle us visually, put their technical prowess on display, that they lose sight of anything resembling story. Pixar seems to wade into each project with supreme confidence [...]

Short Takes – January 2009

Paul — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:49:27 PST

Okay, I’ve been away for a while. Here’s a sampling of the movies I’m seen recently. 10,000 B.C. (2008) If you are not going to entertain us, you could at least make it educational. A feature-length version of those Geico caveman commercials would have been better than this example of under-evolved, Neanderthal cinema. Cloverfield (2008) The Blair Witch Project [...]

The Dark Knight (2008)

Paul — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:53:02 PDT

Do I look like a guy with a plan? Comic book movies are all grow’d up and, boy, are they gloomy. Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to his brilliant goes beyond its predecessor and gives us a rich, multi-layered story with one of the more original takes on the comic book villain I can remember. With the [...]

April Fools! (Toshiba to Sue Everyone Who Didn’t Buy HD DVD)

Paul — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:08:23 PDT

Toshiba, the chief backer of HD DVD, the loser in the high-def disc format wars, has announced what it calls a “reverse class-action” suit against every household that failed purchase an HD DVD player since the format launched in 2006. The lawsuit charges that, by failing to support HD DVD, their non-customers “handed the format [...]

No Country for Old Men (2007)

Paul — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 12:40:26 PDT

I’m fixin’ to do something dumber than hell, but I’m going anyways. Ten years ago, movies like this didn’t win Best Picture. They lost to safe, happy movies like Forrest Gump and Shakespeare in Love. By their usual standards, the Academy voters would have gone with Michael Clayton, the safe and respectable choice. In the last [...]

Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008)

Paul — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:26:27 PDT

The truth, as always, will be far stranger. While he was not a filmmaker or an actor, Arthur C. Clarke’s contribution to film was immeasurable for his role in the making of a single film, that being Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. His sequel, 2010, was also made into a film by Peter Hyams, but [...]

The Last Emperor (1987)

Paul — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 23:15:39 PST

All your life you thought you were better than everyone else. Now you think you’re the worst of all! Perhaps the saddest line in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Oscar-sweeping epic, comes early when the 9-year-old Emperor Pu Yi (Tijger Tsou) naively tells his brother that an emperor can do anything he wants. The bitter irony is that this [...]