Film

‘The Secret World of Arrietty’ Review: A little bit of magic

Feb 18 2012

‘The Secret World of Arrietty’ Review: A little bit of magic

As a child I grew up reading Mary Norton’s children’s story The Borrowers and marveling at the idea of a group of little people that built a life out of the things you assumed you had misplaced or lost. It was a charming and magical idea and now it’s a reasonably charming and magical movie. The Secret World of Arrietty is indeed based on Norton’s book, captured in lovely hand-drawn animation by the acclaimed Studio Ghibli and reaching our shores with a servicable Disney dub and repackage. More

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‘Bullhead’ Review: A noir thriller with some real meat

Feb 18 2012

‘Bullhead’ Review: A noir thriller with some real meat

Jacky is a quiet and solitary guy, but he’s not exactly a likable one; working as a low-level thug for the Belgian hormone mafia, he spends his days intimidating cattle farmers into using steroid injections on their livestock. In his down time, he’s injecting testosterone cocktails of his own into his burly body, training and shadowboxing and trying to outpace the shadows of his past. No, he isn’t a good man, but he’s presented as a fascinating one, a cog in a larger system that’s choking him in the same way it’s steamrolling the put-upon farmers. It helps that he’s the moody center of Michael K. Roskam’s Bullhead, a dark, grim character study masquerading as a crime thriller. More

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Movie Review: Ghost Rider sucks with a ‘Vengeance’

Feb 17 2012

Movie Review: Ghost Rider sucks with a ‘Vengeance’

The curse of Nicolas Cage continues in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, a movie so uninspired and disjointed that it makes its crummy predecessor look like The Dark Knight in comparison.

Although the original film scared up a strong box office over Valentine’s Day weekend in 2007, Sony seems to have been hesitant in bankrolling a sequel. That reluctance has resulted in a thinner budget, shoddier production values and a jettison of the cast and crew from the first go-round. More

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Jan 6 2012

‘The Devil Inside’ Review: Straight to hell

See that date on the calendar? It’s January again, and apparently that means it’s time for another low-rent horror film featuring everyone’s favorite supernatural diva, Satan. Of all the various prophecies and alleged ancient texts related to the Antichrist and the end of days, there has to be one out there that predicts Old Scratch’s strangle-hold on commercial garbage like The Devil Inside. More

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Top 10 Worst Movies of 2011

Jan 4 2012

Top 10 Worst Movies of 2011

 It was neither the best of years nor the worst of years, but just as there were a number of great movies hiding in the misasma of 2011, there were some absolutely wretched movies. And while there were a stunning number of completely useless mainstream flicks, there were an equally stunning number of mean-spirited, entertainment-free indie films shooting for art or notoreity and instead just triggering my gag reflex.

I’m not one to linger on the awful, so here’s the puddle of vomit that was 2011′s worst films. Now that I’ve purged, I can head on into 2012 with a settled stomach and hope for the future.  More

By Bartleby • Featured, Film • 2

Jan 4 2012

Top Ten Horror Films of 2011

 

Like many other genres, when horror movies are bad, they can be very bad. However, when they are good they can sometimes be great. The horror films of 2011 seemed to fall mostly along this divide; there was either mainstream junk not even worth a Redbox rental or vile, pretentious drivel disguised as indie horror or incredibly spooky and fascinating gems worth revisiting after the initial shivers dissapate. More

By Bartleby • Film, Reviews, Uncategorized • 9 • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dec 27 2011

PCN’s Top 10 Movies of 2011: Year in Review

 

Looking back on the films of 2011, it’s clear that this was the year of nostalgia. Not just that commercially referenced ‘let’s do a remake’ variation that Hollywood has been cashing their soul in for over the last decade or so. The medium and its artists got sort of solemn and misty-eyed, and nostalgia became a form of expression. It was also the year of art about art; The Artist, Hugo, Super 8 and even more obscure arthouse fare like The Mill and the Cross dealt with the world of the artistic expression crashing into harsh reality. More

By Bartleby • Film, Reviews • 0

Dec 12 2011

Bane beats Batman in the new poster for ‘The Dark Knight Rises’

If you thought it was hard to avoid media hype for The Dark Knight Rises before, just wait until after this Friday. With an extended prologue sequence being attached to selected IMAX prints of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol this weekend, Nolan’s latest Batman opus is getting a major boost in the publicity arena.

Ushering in this next stage of the media blitz is a brand new poster. After numerous set pics and dropped hints from cast and crew, Warner Bros teases at just how brutal that throw-down between the dark avenger and his nemesis Bane will get. More

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Droid’s Take: The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn’ Review

Dec 1 2011

Droid’s Take: The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn’ Review

Written by: Droid (Read his other reviews and ramblings at Werewolves on the Moon)

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Motion capture cast: Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, Toby Jones, Mackenzie Crook, Daniel Mays, Gad Elmaleh, Joe Starr
Running time: 107 mins | Rating: PG

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Hugo Review: The sad sorcerer’s apprentice

Nov 23 2011

Hugo Review: The sad sorcerer’s apprentice

PCN Rating:

With the fantastic ‘Hugo’, based off Brian Selznick’s Caldecott winning children’s novel, Martin Scorsese returns to a measure of his former glory.

It’s always interesting to watch a filmmaker testing new waters, and in Hugo, a PG-rated big-budget family picture, the great director attempts a genre and format he’s never done before. The result is a rich and rewarding experience–made with craft and care– that proves a strong venue for Scorsese’s passion and adoration for filmmaking. In Hugo’s simple but expressive story there’s a bit of the artist’s own reflection staring out.

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‘Contagion’ Review: Soderbergh makes paranoia infectious

Sep 9 2011

‘Contagion’ Review: Soderbergh makes paranoia infectious

The most foreboding image in Steven Soderbergh’s new outbreak thriller Contagion is an uncovered bowl of bar peanuts.

I mean that as a compliment. At the heart of this star infested, globally minded, medical thriller, there’s a maniacal—even healthy if you will—sense of paranoia and anxiety surrounding our habits and social structures. Soderbergh takes a break from his personal art projects to deliver a monster movie for the masses where the unyielding beast in question is a nasty microbe that plans to eat its way through Hong Kong, London, San Francisco…the world.

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AMAD Sci-Fi Septemeber: Freaky Faron (2006)

Sep 7 2011

AMAD Sci-Fi Septemeber: Freaky Faron (2006)

John Ross’ Freaky Faron is not the movie that the poster or the Netflix synopsis are trying to sell you. This is a subdued and very slight indie feature that feels like a juvenile take on film noir, produced, written and acted by a young crew cutting their teeth on filmmaking. As a result, the production values and the acting—excepting headliner Courtney Halverston—are cheaper than your average SYFY original, and there are no visual effects to speak of.

It is perhaps a bit unfair to hold Faron to the same standards as the other films in this series, because it really seems like a student film in need of some helpful critique and guidance. The pieces are here, and it’s clear that the people who made Freaky Faron love good movies. I have no doubt that everyone involved learned valuable things about the process. Still, as a stand-alone feature, something that a curious Netflix viewer might stumble upon, Faron can’t cut it.

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Sci-Fi AMAD September 4th: Alien Trespass (2009)

Sep 6 2011

Sci-Fi AMAD September 4th: Alien Trespass (2009)

Bottom-line is this one’s only gonna hit the sweet spot of a certain cross-section of movie geek; the retro sci-fi/horror fan whose bread and butter is 1950s-to-60′s B flicks. It’s pitched as a mock-up of all those earnest but intensely cheesy ‘thrillers’ that featured invaders from another planet coming down in Styrofoam ships to melt our collective brains with weaponry that looked like it had been concocted from discarded toilet paper rolls. You know the kind. Stuff like Invaders from Mars, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and It Came From Outer Space. Some were terrific, some were alot of fun, and some were hilariously bad. All of them shared a naive and hopeful spirit that was common to the time period but almost non-existent in today’s climate.

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Sci-Fi AMAD September: Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)

Sep 5 2011

Sci-Fi AMAD September: Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)

There is a man. He may be a scientist or a therapist. He keeps a young woman locked in an antiseptic room and conducts experiments to test her emotional threshold. Many of these tests are incomprehensible, most seem to tax the woman on a level more spiritual than physical. Both the man and the woman occupy a stark and empty commune known as the Aboria Institute. The woman eventually escapes and the man gives chase. These are, more or less, the events of Beyond the Black Rainbow, the first film by new director Pan Cosmatos.

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Sci-Fi AMAD September: The Eliminators (1986)

Sep 5 2011

Sci-Fi AMAD September: The Eliminators (1986)

“What is this, anyway, some kind of comic book? We got robots, we got cavemen, we got kung fu.”

Some kind of comic book indeed. The Eliminators is a great example of why the 1980s was such a fun decade for movies. You could head into your local multiplex and find oddball craziness like this right alongside big-budget blockbusters. The whole thing plays like a 12 year old boy’s wish-list for a movie; cyborg heroes who are part tank, hot babe scientists, time travel, centurions, flying robots, cavemen, ninjas, pirates, butch lesbian river boat captains. Ok, maybe that last one is too esoteric, depending on the twelve year old.

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