Mr. Brown Versus

I'll be honest: after watching the horrendous and pretentious second installment of   The Twilight Saga: New Moon  in cinemas, I avoided it's third installment, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse like a man with leper. I honestly believed that the next installment of the series couldn't get any worse than it already did with the previous two. I thought I was tapped out; I didn't think I could watch one more movie in which Stephanie Meyer continues her march of destroying the vampire mythology with glittering bloodsuckers moping around, doing fuck all that makes a vampire a vampire. I didn't think I could endure one more minute of the love triangle that's been formed, with Edward Cullen (the ever bland and charmless Robert Pattinson) and Jacob Black (the horrendous Taylor Lautner) fighting over Bella Swan's (Kristen Stewart) affections. I didn't think I could stomach Bella and her bullshit for another two hours, or watching semi-interesting supporting...

A few days ago in my review of Twilight , I forgot to mention the plot of the film, and this was done intentionally for two reasons: First - there's no real plot to the first movie because all it was dealing with was the courtship between Bella Swann (Kristen Stewart) and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), and meeting the rest of the Cullen clan: Dr. Carlisle Cullen (Peter Facinelli), mind reader Alice (Ashley Greene), Southern charmer Jasper (Jackson Rathbone), Debbie Downer Rosaline ( Thirteen star Nikki Reed), and other people who really aren't that important to the story. Second - it was the least important part of why the first movie was such an incredible bore of an opener to a film series. New Moon , by contrast, has more going on in the sequel this time, and I will be talking about it because it actually pays a big part into why the second installment is by far, one of the worst sequels that I have ever seen. There are some sequels that get better with each viewing, muc...

Here's the thing with the vampire genre: when done right, they're great horror tales who don't rely on cheap scares to leave a mark on the audience. The best example of this is Ann Rice's Interview with the Vampire , the popular Gothic horror tale chronicling the life of one Louis de Pointe du Lac, an ordinary man who is turned into a vampire by Lestat, the torrid love-hate relationship between the two men, and Claudia, the little girl which becomes Louis' only reason for staying with Lestat. That was a tale full of life in the shadows and the tragedy of living forever and the characters were engaging, tormented people who each learn that immortality is a fate far worse than death itself. For a few seasons, the HBO series True Blood brought simmering sexuality and gory violence to the cable screen, along with interesting characters and...vampire politics? And most recently, the genre gave us two terrific movies, 2008's Sweedish thriller Let The Right One I...

Denzel Washington's career-best performance as an alcoholic pilot who's life is in a nose dive in Flight . The sheer madness of Seven Psychopaths . The best coming-of-age movie since Garden State in T he Perks of Being A Wallflower . A James Bond film that feels nostalgic, yet completely new in Skyfall . Paul Thomas Anderson's unique and beautifully shot character drama The Master . And the Wachowski's..... Cloud Atlas .  What do all these movies have in common? They're all movies i've been promising to review, but put them off due to a severe case of procrastination. I will get to each one of these movies in due time, and as of this week, none of those movies matter. Not even Steven Spielberg's Lincoln , which has gotten serious Oscar buzz surrounding it, in particular, Daniel Day Lewis as the title character matters this week. For the next week, one film will hold American audiences in it's vice-grip. The finale to a worldwide phenomen...

Sorry about the lack of movie reviews over two weeks, but as promised, i'm talking nothing but good movies all this week. Up next is writer/director P.T. Anderson's The Master , and then the black comedy Seven Psychopaths . Today, we start off with Ben Affleck's Argo . On November 4, 1979, 52 members of the American Embassy were taken hostage by Iranian militants and students of the Iranian Revolution, where the dictatorial Shah of Iran, Mohammad. Reza Pahavi was forced out by the new ruler Ruholla Khomeini and was given refuge on American shores. The demands were to hand over the despot ruler so that he may face Iranian justice for the numerous crimes he committed against the Iranian people The hostage situation; the anger and frustration both sides felt and experienced - Iranians feeling that the United States was covering for a heinous criminal; the United States angry at then-President Jimmy Carter's ineffectiveness to bring home U.S. citizens ...

Eventually, I am going to get to reviewing a movie that I actually liked, because I don't just want to be be bitching about terrible movies from the past and from the present In fact, there are two really great movies i'll be reviewing within the next week ( The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Master ) that I think rank among the year's best; add to that the release of Ben Affleck's international thriller Argo , and you'll be seeing a weekend's worth of praise of movies from me, including my picks for the best movies i've seen thusfar. Now, before I tear into the latest review on the sci-fi action picture, Battleship , I need to give this movie some background; not as much on the board game that inspired this bloated and boring piece of crap, mind you, but rather, the director who's trademarks are all over this mess of a film: Michael Bay. See, back in 1998, Bay released a little movie that joined together an unholy union of the Dirty Dozen, the...

A great movie has many, if not all, of the following elements: A great screenplay that engages the audience and makes us feel something about the characters on the page; actors who can bring their characters to life from said page; a fine attention to production design that makes us believe in the world that the characters inhabit (and many a time, the surroundings become a character in of itself), crisp, clear editing, gorgeous cinematography, a score that can stir a triumphant victory for our protagonist, or a string section piece that's meant to pull at our heartstrings in a mournful way; and most importantly: a director who's vision is unclouded, challenging, breathtaking, and uncompromising, or even all of the things mentioned. Songs are an interesting lot for me. While I do enjoy listening to my favorite band or artist's track on the big screen, for me, it really doesn't add much to the movie except to fill the void when the actors are engaged in an action,...