michael's movie reviews
2002
These are the movies I reviewed in 2002.
reviewed 2002.12.30
This is a film starring Jennifer Beals and Brendan Fraser as a sister and brother. The sister becomes pregnant, and agrees to the suggestion by her geneticist husband that she submit the child (via the amniotic fluid in the womb) to a battery of genetic tests for various things.The test suggests that just like Fraser's uncle-to-be, the child (a boy) will be gay...
reviewed 2002.12.08
This is a sci-fi flick about a psychologist who is called to a distant space research centre to get to the bottom of some recent events. Things have gone very strange on the centre that orbits what may be a (bizarre) planet (ie, "Solaris"). When he (George Clooney) gets there, he learns all about the source of the strangeness indeed.It's a pretty heady movie...
reviewed 2002.12.07
This movie is as Canadian as they get...
reviewed 2002.12.01
This is by far my favourite Disney pic...
reviewed 2002.12.01
This is a Disney animated flick that takes Treasure Island into space...
reviewed 2002.11.23
This is actually pretty good...
reviewed 2002.11.13
This is kinky Mexican flick (the English title would be 'And your mother, too') about a 30-something woman and two teenage boys who go on a road trip. It was greeted with a great deal of hoopla, as certain films seem to be, and while I don't think it deserved all the fanfare, this is an interesting flick.The film seems - while you're watching it - to be about the dismally venal boys, but morphs ..
reviewed 2002.11.13
This is an American/Japanese gangster flick starring Takeshi Kitano...
reviewed 2002.11.05
Well, no two ways about it, this is one of the most intense, frightening flicks I've seen in some time...
reviewed 2002.11.01
This is an odd Japanese film about a fellow who returns early from a midnight fishing trip on a tip from an anonymous letter to find his wife in bed with another man. He stabs the man, kills the wife, and spends the next eight years in prison. This all happens as the opening credits are still playing.The flick picks up with his release from prison, and his attempted rehabilitation as a barber...
reviewed 2002.10.24
This is a very odd Japanese film about a boy who sets out to visit his estranged mother...
reviewed 2002.10.16
This is a movie about a handful of lowlifes who congeal into a family of sorts that I recommend whole-heartedly...
reviewed 2002.10.14
This review contains spoilers, be warned.This is an Aussie period flick set in the 1800's, when real ladies were compulsive gamblers, Anglican priests were neurotic and corrupt, and 'the common man' was likely worse...
reviewed 2002.10.07
This is a Japanese animated movie of outstanding art work and brilliantly original storytelling...
reviewed 2002.10.06
This is a movie that drifts from legal drama to thriller as it wanders through the story of a lawyer and her husband (an ex-soldier who turns out to be a wanted war criminal).The story is a bit stop-and-start, and the characters (played by Ashley Judd, Morgan Freeman, and James Cavaziel (recently, of 'Count of Monte Cristo')seem to morph as the movie wears on...
reviewed 2002.10.05
I'm going to go out on a limb and imagine that I'll be one of the few people who enjoyed this one as much as I did...
reviewed 2002.09.29
This is a comedy that combines class warfare, sex, murder, and satire. It's set in the UK in the 1930's, and involves a gathering of some of the country's upper crust at a 'country home' (e.g. mansion) for a turkey shoot. It follows everything that's happening "above stairs" and "below stairs", and throws the relationship between the two societies into sharp relief.With entertaining performances..
reviewed 2002.09.28
I seem to see this movie fairly regularly; this is at least the third time...
reviewed 2002.09.22
This is a recent Val Kilmer movie about a man living the speed-freak lifestyle in crummy ol' LA. He's pretty much reached rock bottom as a snitch working for some creepy DEA cops and spending his days in a haze of methamphetamine.But he's also a trumpet player who's lost his wife, and who is seeking revenge against the crooks who executed her when he and she turned up at the wrong place (another..
reviewed 2002.09.20
I've seen this period comedy about two destitute actors (Oliver Platt and Stanley Tucci) on the lam on a cruise ship something like three times...
reviewed 2002.09.12
This is a creepy German movie about a serial murderer of children...
reviewed 2002.09.08
I found this bizarre Chow Yun-Fat movie in the local rental outfit's small (and dwindling) foreign section, and rented it because I thought it would be an interesting taste of mid-90's HK action weirdness.I was part right. I couldn't have forseen that the first third of the movie would have been set and filmed in the neighbourhood of Vancouver that I moved from just last month.In short; this ..
reviewed 2002.09.08
This is a French flick about two detectives (Jean Reno, Vincent Cassel) following two separate crimes (a murder at a University in an isolated town in France's mountainous east, and the break-in of a crypt in a cemetary)...
reviewed 2002.09.02
This is a film about a Scottish woman (played by the excellent Cate Blanchett) who becomes a spy in Vichy France during WWII. It's a hazardous job that she undertakes in an attempt to find her love, a downed pilot.Along the way, she finds herself surrounded by duplicitous scum and killers and relying on partners who are either of dubious merit or tempermental wildmen...
reviewed 2002.08.28
First off, I have to say that I saw this one with my brother and his wife. I'm not sure what the missus thought, but my brother hated it. I didn't; I thought it was richly cliched, but worth watching.This is a Sci-Fi piece based on one of Philip K...
reviewed 2002.08.25
This one gets points primarily for its send-up of most action flicks of its kind...
reviewed 2002.08.20
I saw this on TV, but I thought I'd comment anyway because I liked it."Dick" is a comedy about the fall of the Nixon administration...
reviewed 2002.08.19
This is an adaptation of the Sci-Fi novel by the same name, by author HG Wells. It's about a scientist in 19th century America who invents a time machine in order to travel back to the night of his fiancee's death in an attempt to undo that event. He fails, and winds up bouncing around the future all the way up to 800,000 AD, when the world is a very, very different place.The movie is well made,..
reviewed 2002.08.12
Upon a second viewing, I have to upgrade my rating on this flick. Yes, it's a silly vampire story (as my brother pointed out). The vampires are replaced with bad guys of native American folklore, true, but similarities between the Wendigo in this one and run-of-the-mill vampires is too much.The plot is essentially this: a fnck-up in the US army (played by a hungry-looking Guy Pierce) is sent to ..
reviewed 2002.08.08
This is a ghost story set in Spain during that country's 1930s civil war. It features a boy sent to an orphanage following the death of his father at the front. The boy is confronted by a bizarre staff, a cruel population of orphans, and one of the creepiest ghosts ever to grace film.The plot is very original, involving the ghost's death and the staff of the orphanage in a way that only comes to..
reviewed 2002.08.01
When I emerged from this one, I was certain that I hadn't slept for six days...
reviewed 2002.07.26
This is a movie about a temp named Josh who's a wannabe novelist and a bit of a fuckup...
reviewed 2002.07.23
This is a movie by Trey Parker of South Park notoriety...
reviewed 2002.07.22
This is a movie by the same (German) director as Run, Lola, Run...
reviewed 2002.07.10
Well, well, Tom Cruise can act after all...
reviewed 2002.07.02
I'm writing this review a full two weeks after I watched the flick, because I've been trying to decide what the point of the thing really was...
Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
reviewed 2002.06.21
This is a story about three Australian drag performers who take their shtick on the road to do a performance in the Outback...
reviewed 2002.06.21
What a great flick...
reviewed 2002.06.15
Saw this on the digital projector down in Richmond. It was visually improved, but some of the plot problems are still there. My favourite nit to pick: if C-3PO lived on the Lars family farm for 'many years', how come he didn't react as if he'd ever seen it when he and R2-D2 returned twenty years later in "Episode IV"?[ spoiler ]It turns out that they explain this at the end of the "third" mov..
reviewed 2002.05.20
This is the third time I've seen this one, and I've noticed something. As with The Fly, I can see this one every five years or so and not remember a damn thing about it. Which is good, because it's certainly worth seeing repeatedly.The movie is about the crew of a small space vessel that's en route to the Solar system from deep space towing a large ore refinery...
reviewed 2002.05.19
This is an interesting American flick featuring William H...
Star Wars Episode II - Attack of the Clones
reviewed 2002.05.16
I went and saw the first showing of the new Star Wars movie last night. It was an improvement. Quite different from the previous one, and substantially different from the first trilogy, too. I have to say, I'm not sure that anything from "Episode I" matters to this movie, however. Maybe the meeting of Padme and Anakin? Did Qui-Gon ever matter?Movie making has certainly changed in the last 25 yea..
reviewed 2002.04.27
This is a slightly odd French film about a young man and his family and a killer from his past...
reviewed 2002.04.26
This is a movie about two CIA agents...
reviewed 2002.04.26
Wow...
reviewed 2002.04.02
This is a movie about three guys who go out to hunt down a shark that's been terrorizing the waters of their small resort town...
reviewed 2002.04.01
Blade II feels quite a bit like an unintended sequel, picking up the two central characters in very different positions from where we last saw them. The human/vampire cross-breed is still doing his thing, slaughtering vampires because. He's manipulated into attempting to stop a super-species of vampires, working for the vampire nation.This thing is right on the edge of the line into B-movie terr..
reviewed 2002.03.31
I've always thought that this was the best of the original "Star Wars" movies. The story is the richest, the dialog and acting the strongest, and there are no ewoks or animated characters. It's also the one in which the heroes constantly take it in the teeth.In this movie, our heroes are first forced to flee their base when it is discovered and attacked (badly) by the Empire...
reviewed 2002.03.31
Aside from being an amusing look at the American take on British life in 1960, this movie about a woman being hounded by a maniac suffers from one horrible flaw; it's plot can be entirely deduced by reading the summary on the cassette box...
Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (Cavedwellers)
reviewed 2002.03.30
Man, it just doesn't get any worse than the original movie 'Cave dwellers' that gets torn to ribbons in this episode...
Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (Pod People)
reviewed 2002.03.30
The Mystery Science Theatre flicks are always so bizarre there's no real placing them amongst the 'normal' movie universe...
reviewed 2002.03.30
I picked up this flick for $5 at a video store that was closing down, along with the others in the original series (I declined the offer of 'Episode I')...
reviewed 2002.03.29
This is a film dating to 1963 by Akira Kurosawa...
reviewed 2002.03.23
This is an animated kid's movie set in the ice age. It features a mammoth, a giant sloth, and a saber-tooth tiger who band together to attempt the return of a lost human infant to its tribe.I think this one is aimed at a particularly young crowd...
reviewed 2002.03.16
It was the rave reviews of Ben Kingsley's performance in this one that drew me to see this flick. Kingsley has been one of my favourite actors for a long time, and I thought it would be interesting to see him try his hand at a gangster. It wasn't.I'm not sure exactly what the intention was with this film, but Kingsley's menacing appearance and pathetic instability didn't quite jibe with the re..
reviewed 2002.03.09
This is another version of "The Three Musketeers" by Alexander Dumas...
reviewed 2002.03.09
This is an adaptation of the novel by Alexandre Dumas. It's about a young sailor with a beautiful fiancee, a strong sense of honour, and a promising career. All of these things are stripped away when he is wrongfully accused of treason and sent to hell on Earth in the form of a remote island prison.He eventually gets free, and all hell breaks loose.This is a quite beautiful movie, well cast,..
reviewed 2002.03.05
This is a silly bit of science fiction/comedy about a couple of professors at a community college who discover extra-terrestrial life in a meteorite. Their discovery is made known to the government, which promptly intervenes and screws everything up. Soon ET life is threatening to take over the world, and it's up to our two professors and some team-mates to save the humanity from extinction.It's..
reviewed 2002.03.02
I can't believe it took me 20 years to see this flick. It's a sci-fi thriller set in Antarctica and featuring Kurt Russell, and it's about an alien life-form that causes all kinds of grief after it gets dug out of the ice by some Norwegians.This movie scores its points almost entirely on its depiction of the break-down in the staff of the research station once The Thing gets loose...
reviewed 2002.02.18
This is a Woody Allen flick, starring Woody Allen (naturally) opposite Helen Hunt...
reviewed 2002.02.09
This is a French flick, from Jean-Pierre Jeunet the director of Delicatessen, City of Lost Children, and Alien Resurrection...
reviewed 2002.01.20
Another amazing movie from the director of 'Pi'. While it deals with the by-now familiar theme of "drugs are bad, m'kay", it's also a harrowing tale of the destruction of people and the abandoning of their dreams.And while the cinematography, music, and sets build an aura of impending destruction, nothing in the movie quite prepares you for the last fifteen minutes...
reviewed 2002.01.18
This is a flick about a family that comes together after years of failure and heartbreak...
reviewed 2002.01.15
This is a movie about a teenage girl graduating from high school and trying to figure out what to do with her life. It's got Thora Birch playing a role that's fairly similar to the one she played in American Beauty and Steve Buscemi playing a similar role to the one he played in Trees Lounge (e.g. something close to how I picture the actor being like, himself).I won't g..
reviewed 2002.01.12
This is a Jon Favreau flick. He wrote it and stars in it (along with Vince Vaughn). Favreau is a wannabe boxer and they're both construction workers serving an LA mobster (played with uncanny skill by Peter Falk). When they get the chance to get into the 'bigs' as goons for Falk, they jump at the chance to do a job in NYC.So they set off...
reviewed 2002.01.12
This is a flick about a young woman who is sent away by family and friends to a camp where she'll be "set straight". Her friends and family have come to the conclusion that she's a lesbian, and that she needs the help of a school that purports to 'straighten' gay teens.Needless to say, the dorm rooms separating the girls from the boys turn out to be a less than ideal scenario for this purpose...
reviewed 2002.01.05
This is a David Mamet flick, and that shows in the pacing, the dialogue, and the grim, over-real violence...
reviewed 2002.01.05
This flick has a great cast, and what promises to be a complex plot, but it somehow fails to fall into place...
What's The Worst That Could Happen
reviewed 2002.01.02
This is an amusing flick with Martin Lawrence and Danny DeVito. Lawrence plays a thief, who breaks into the home of the wealthy DeVito only to be robbed in turn. The item that DeVito's millionaire steals is a 'lucky ring'; an item given him by his new girlfriend. The ring has significance because it had belonged to her father, a gambler.Though a bit tedious in points - with cliches, a plot that ..
reviewed 2002.01.02
This is an amusing attempt at Sci-Fi by John Carpenter starring Natasha Henstridge and Ice Cube...