Movies, Phantasy

The Invisible

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High School Movie. Not long until graduation. Boy wants to become a writer in New York, escaping his controlling widow mother. Girl, after losing her mother, is angry and assumes the role of a violent troublemaker and gang leader. Girl kills boy, smacking him once too hard on the head. But there is a twist. image [Read More]
Movies, Phantasy

Ratatouille

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Brad Bird (writer, director) and Pixar have done it again. I continue to stand in awe of the dazzling imagination this team is bringing to the movies. Visually and conceptually Ratatouille is exquisitely pleasing. You don’t feel that this new film is a tiny bit repetitive of their previous effort The Incredibles. Guenter Grass selected image [Read More]
Movies, Phantasy

Next

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The film invents a skill that no human has ever possessed: to see for two seconds reliably into the future. Such a capability comes in handy. You can win against the Casino, you can prevent a robber from killing two people, and more.Yet our hero (Nicolas Cage) is ambivalent about his skill. It helps him image [Read More]
Drama, Movies

Ocean’s 13

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Ocean’s 11 struck me as sterile. The third episode of the George Clooney’s star vehicle has considerable charm. An old friend of Ocean (Clooney) gets screwed by a ruthless Vegas casino owner (Al Pacino). Ocean rounds up his gang of thieves to rectify this injustice. I loved the final sentence when George Clooney and Matt image [Read More]
Movies, Phantasy

Spiderman 3

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It takes imaginative writers to stretch a story across multiple films.  Spiderman 3 lacked such talent. Compared to the first two installments, the film feels uninspired, repetitive and contrived. Audiences can only stomach so much transformation in the lead character before they will turn way.

Movies, Phantasy

The Last Mimzy

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On a previous flight this film was offered to me for lunch. I passed. Without any sound the beginning looked slow and quite lame. On this new flight I tuned in and discovered that the story has unexpected depth. Extraterrestrial creatures have come to earth to recapture what was lost in perfecting their ability to image [Read More]
Drama, Movies

Fracture

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Anthony Hopkins plays a sociopath similar to the one he portrayed in Silence of the Lambs. Hopkins’ character shoots his wife when he discovers she is cheating on him with a police officer. Without any remorse, he tries to get off the hook for the murder by outsmarting the good-looking district attorney. The film is image [Read More]
Drama, Movies

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

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Isn’t it interesting that people have such a soft spot for bank robbers?  Forcing a grandmother to hand over all her savings and shooting her right in the head would not make a good story. But robbing a bank does not stir peoples’ indignation. The impersonal bank is not perceived to be a real victim. image [Read More]
Drama, Movies

The Bourne Ultimatum

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How would you feel if you suddenly found out that you were a totally different person until a few years ago and if you did not remember anything about your previous life? (My fear is that I might discover out that I was George Bush. ) For two installments Jason Bourne has been trying to image smile [Read More]
Comedy, Movies

Blades of Glory

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This newest effort by Will Farrell is not nearly as funny as Bodega Nights.  The basic idea behind the movie has some charms. Let’s use the gender wars to go for a real gender bender. Two guys compete in the Olympic pair ice-skating competition.  I have been told many times that the top female player image [Read More]