Dark Shadows Movie Review

I’ll say off the bat that I was primed to severely dislike Dark Shadows, Tim Burton’s updating of the 1960s daytime soap opera about a gothic manor in Maine with strange supernatural occurrences. I have been less than enthusiastic – to put it diplomatically – about most of Burton’s work in the last ten years. When I think back on his career as a director, what I’ve enjoyed most are his films that are straight comedies. He has a real knack for the bizarrely funny and whimsically macabre. I think of Beetlejuice, Mars Attacks!, and Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure as his most enjoyable features. Recent films like Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Alice in Wonderland have been simply odd, overblown and bloated. Then there was the matter of the advertising for Dark Shadows, which I thought made it look like a 1970s kitsch piece featuring yet another in a long and increasingly exhaustive series of offbeat Johnny Depp performances (his eighth in collaboration with Burton). Imagine my immense surprise to find a lighthearted homage to a TV series that Burton and Depp both claim to have loved as children.

Hugo Movie Review

This review is based on the 3D version of the film. As this is only the second film I’ve seen in the contemporary 3D style I don’t feel I’m familiar enough with its uses and implementations to 100% accurately judge whether it’s any good or not. However, I have taken the liberty of commenting on my reaction to the 3D as I believe it is the critic’s duty to report his response to a film as completely as possible.

When I read that Martin Scorsese was going to make his next film in 3D and it was also going to be an adaptation of Brian Selznick’s children’s picture novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, my first reaction was to be simply dumbfounded. Why would the director of so many dark and violent films that deeply explore the human condition venture into such new territory? And why would the man who still insists on using film stock, a man who supremely values film history, shoot in 3D? Surely this must have been some kind of total commercial sellout. Well, the final judgment is yet to be determined as it often takes years for the critical and audience response to render a final verdict on a piece of pop culture’s place in the canon, but after seeing it I can say it makes a lot more sense now that Scorsese was drawn to this particular story and this particular use of 3D technology to make Hugo.

(500) Days of Summer Movie Review

First published at American Madness on 23 November 2009.

Reposted here without changes.

(500) Days of Summer rests solidly on the strengths of its charismatic leads Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, who play Tom Hansen and Summer Finn, co-workers at a greeting card company who find, and then lose, romance. Written by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber and directed by Marc Webb (known primarily for music videos, but making his feature debut here), it is the perfect, and often honest, answer to the contrived and sappy romantic comedies we see produced far too often in Hollywood.

“This is not a love story,” we’re told at the outset by an omniscient narrator. Although a love story is most certainly what it is. The film begins with the recounting of the happy couple’s breakup. That line is designed to set us up for the fact that the couple will not get back together. Armed with the knowledge of what is ultimately to come on Day 280 (or something) of the titular 500, the story then jumps back to Day 1 and then soldiers on ahead depicting the burgeoning romance between Tom, the romantic who believes in love at first sight and soul mates, and Summer, who doesn’t believe in love (perhaps because she’s never experienced it) and refuses for several months to even admit she is his girlfriend.

Kick-Ass Movie Review: If You Think This Movie Is Funny, Please Seek Professional Medical Help

The opening, depicted in full in the trailer, shows a man wearing an odd costume with wings standing on top of a New York skyscraper. A voiceover talks about fantasy of wanting to be a superhero. The man leaps from the ledge and plummets head first toward the street below while the crowds cheer. He slams full speed into a taxi cab – dead. This brief sequence is a microcosm of what follows.

I really wanted to like Kick-Ass. Really, I did. I thought the trailer showed great potential for ironic satire. I followed with bemusement the minor uproar over the filthy language that comes out of the mouth of Hit Girl, an eleven year old superhero played by Chloe Moretz. Then the reviews started coming in and some critics were put off by the violence inflicted by and on that same young girl. I thought maybe some of these critics were simply old codgers who were no longer in tune with the hip. Then I saw it and I never thought I would have this reaction to a movie in my life: This movie is morally repugnant.