Foreign
Let the Right One In - Movie Review
As much as I love horror (even awesomely-bad horror), I’ve never really developed much of an affinity for vampire movies. Most of the time they are too cliched and ridiculous for even my forgiving tastes. Even so, I couldn’t resist checking out the unbelievably well-received Swedish vampire flick, Let the Right One In.
Set in 1982 [...]
Four Mini Movie Reviews
So, I’ve seen several movies recently, but have been way too busy to do reviews of all of them. Here are four brief reviews of films from four different genres, there is something for everyone in this post so be sure to keep reading after the jump.
The Strangers
I, along with most other moderately serious [...]
The Band’s Visit (Bikur Ha-Tizmoret) - Movie Review
MetaCritic Score: 80
I’ve been a bit hesitant to rent many independently released foreign language films recently. After my debacles with 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 days and Bamako, I started to second guess the festival awards and excessive critical praise that adorns the boxes of many of the movies I’ve never heard of at [...]
Bamako - Movie Review
I want to preface this by saying that I apologize for the brevity of this review and the last one, but there really just wasn’t a whole lot for me to expand on in either film.
MetaCritic Score: 81
I had high hopes for Bamako. Scores in the 80s are tough to come by on MetaCritic and [...]
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days - Movie Review
So, several weeks ago I spent some time browsing over MetaCritic’s “All-Time High Scores” list to see how some of my favorite movies from the past decade have graded out compared to the all-time greats. There were some names that I expected to be up there (4. Pan’s Labyrinth 98, 16. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon [...]
El Orfanato (The Orphanage) - Movie Review
MetaCritic Score: 74
I’m going to start with a mini-rant here, but bear with me.
One pet peeve of mine is when studios put tags like “*Generic Big Name Director* Presents…” on the poster/box for a new movie when they served as a producer, but didn’t direct the movie themselves. Usually the director whose coattails they [...]
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - Movie Review
MetaCritic Score: 92
Wow. What a movie. I will get this out of the way right up front, I think The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was the best picture to come out last year. It took me a couple days to decide, but I would rank it slightly above the Oscar winner, No Country [...]
The Host - Movie Review
I’m not normally big on monster movies. This may surprise some people because I’m normally a huge fan of horror movies in general. Serial killers? Sure. Zombies? Why not? Murderous ghosts? I’ll give it a shot. For some reason, however, monster/creature movies have always struck me as being a little too over the top and [...]
Paris, Je T’aime - Movie Review
The box for Paris, Je T’aime tells us that the film is going to make us “Fall In Love” with the city, but, while the city is the setting for each of the 18 vignettes, it really isn’t the focus of the film.
Paris is really about the people of the city. In particular, it’s largely [...]
