michael's movie reviews

2007

These are the movies I reviewed in 2007.

Zodiac

reviewed 2007.12.29

Beware: this is a long movie, and one that seems to pick up its pace from the era in which it's set: the 70's.Happily, it's also quite a good one...

Death at a Funeral

reviewed 2007.12.26

This English comedy starts out well over the top and just keeps climbing. As with most British comedy, it features repression, blackmail and incontinence: all fine fare. But it seems to suffer from the sheer volume of pathetic jerks and their many dysfunctional relationships.Watchable, but you can find better stuff from most of the actors this thing...

The Wedding Crashers

reviewed 2007.12.18

This is a movie about two louts who crash weddings with the intention of meeting women. It appears to work like a charm, and the early part of the movie features any number of hot young things hopping into bed with the two leading men. Things get complicated when one of them falls in love with his latest mark, while the other finds that he's been the target rather than the hunter.It's mostly har..

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

reviewed 2007.12.16

This is one of the last movies we saw in the cinema before our son was born. A sad way to see off many years of avid movie-going!While this film's cinematography was memorable and the performances generally apt, I didn't appreciate its trudging plot, listless pacing or underwhelming sense of any conflict...

Layer Cake

reviewed 2007.12.08

This is a gangster movie...

Capote

reviewed 2007.10.09

This is the story of Truman Capote, the writer...

Munich

reviewed 2007.09.19

This is a story assassination during the Cold War era...

Sin City

reviewed 2007.08.07

This is an incessantly unpleasant and sexist movie based on a comic book series from the early '90s...

The Bourne Ultimatum

reviewed 2007.07.24

This is the third of the "Bourne" movies, featuring a former CIA agent who has lost all his memory and despite being hunted by various violent parties is attempting to patch together a new life (and self of identity)...

Tremors

reviewed 2007.06.22

I love this film. It's like a redneck Jaws, and I mean that two ways. Obviously, it has a man-versus-monster theme. But moreover it is a triumph of character-driven, high-impact story-telling. This might take a bit of explaining, but here goes.It features two yahoos in some dusty patch of the western US...

The Constant Gardener

reviewed 2007.05.11

This is a story about one man's quest to find out what really happened to his murdered wife...

Sahara

reviewed 2007.04.23

Back in the Pleistocene, there were adventure books written by a man named Clive Cussler and starring a larger-than-life character called Dirk Pitt (seriously)...

Lord of War

reviewed 2007.04.12

This is a movie about an arms dealer who rides a knife's edge between a successful - and lucrative - career and the legal boundaries of the industry...

Delicatessen

reviewed 2007.03.10

I showed Mari this old favorite of mine...

Idiocracy

reviewed 2007.03.07

I finally got around to seeing this movie (or any movie!) and I'm glad I made the investment. It's about a fellow who's not exactly living life to its fullest, drifting along in a dead-end job with nothing else to speak of. Through some comedic events, he's locked up in a cryochamber like Walt Disney and he disappears into the future.The future, it turns out is not too bright...

Primer

reviewed 2007.02.07

I came across this indie time travel movie quite by chance, and I'm glad I did...

rand()m quote

Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that's real power.

—Clint Eastwood