With all due respect to “The Godfather, Part II,” “Aliens” forever changed the way we looked at sequels. It contains the elements that define the laws of sequel-making – everything is bigger, faster, more elaborate – but the crucial difference with “Aliens” is that the story never takes a back seat to anything. That dedication to telling a good story results in one of the most intense, squirm-inducing movies you’ll see in this or any other genre. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the only Nostromo crew member to survive the attack from a most hostile alien life form, is found by…
Author: David Medsker
“The Ref” is the one Christmas movie that I can relate to. At last, someone explored how unbelievably stressful getting together with your family for the holidays can be, and then turned that setup on its ear by adding an incompetent but feisty cat burglar. It’s everything that the holidays are in real life; it’s hostile, it’s reckless, and features one person who’s had just a bit too much to drink. Most of all, it’s bindingly funny. Denis Leary stars as Gus, a cat burglar who’s just tripped an alarm and needs to lie low. Hanging out in a supermarket,…
Magical. God knows how they do it, but Pixar is easily the most consistent, most intelligent movie shop in Hollywood. Their movies are loaded with razor sharp wit, mind-boggling visuals, pitch perfect casting, and an abundance of heart. If Disney knows what’s good for them, they will go to the negotiating table early (“Nemo” is the last movie in their current deal together) and give Pixar whatever they want in order to keep distributing their movies. “Finding Nemo” had a lot to live up to: Pixar’s last movie, “Monsters Inc.,” was one for the ages, a dazzlingly clever and touching…
Hilarious. The tepid reviews from fellow critics are surprising. “A Mighty Wind” is just as funny as Christopher Guest’s other two mockumentaries (“Waiting for Guffman,” “Best In Show”) and has a couple of performances that are downright transcendent. The latest target of Guest’s whimsy is folk music. The setup is that a renowned music promoter who specialized in 1960s folk music has just died, and one of his sons (Bob Balaban) organizes a tribute to his father and reunites the three most successful bands of the period: The Main Street Singers, The Folksmen, and Mitch and Mickey. The latter two…
“Road House” is the mother of all stop signs for channel surfers everywhere. No matter how far along the movie is when you stumble upon it, you will put the remote down and watch it to its completion. And why is that, exactly? Sure, I’m giving the movie four stars, but I’m also the first to admit that it’s not terribly well made, or well acted for that matter. So what is it about “Road House” that inspires such admiration? The fights? The sex? The Zen philosophy? The homoerotic subtext? (More on that later.) That’s right, you may not have…
Depending on whom you ask, “Jackass: The Movie” is either the funniest movie ever made or the first sign of the Apocalypse. This isn’t much middle ground. You’re either down with guys puking, mutilating themselves and breaking stuff, or you want them thrown in jail for corrupting the youth of America. I’m in the former group, though that’s not to say that there are things that I wish they’d quit doing. Okay, let’s talk about the opening scene, which Bam Margera claims in the bonus features is the best intro in movie history. Shot on film, to the strains of…
Ten minutes of brilliance, 70 minutes of mediocrity, one minute of brilliance. Such is “Ice Age,” the latest CGI animation endeavor, and the first by 20th Century Fox. There are moments where the spirit of the late, great Looney Tunes animator Chuck Jones is surely smiling down upon the filmmakers, but it’s lost in a watered down, by-the-numbers story that bears an uncanny resemblance to both “Shrek” and the far superior “Monsters, Inc.” The story begins, yep, in the Ice Age, with the animals making the trek south to warmer climes. Except for Manfred, a wooly mammoth (voiced by Ray…
When word leaked that It director Steven Soderbergh and his buddy George Clooney were planning a remake of the Rat Pack flick “Ocean’s Eleven,” two things happened. First, a whole mess of A-list actors, and other assorted friends of Soderbergh (ahem, Don Cheadle), wanted in and agreed to work for scale, which was unheard of. Second, everyone else said, “What the hell are they thinking? The original wasn’t that good in the first place.” While that may be true, this latest model of “Ocean’s Eleven” is a lot of fun. It may be empty, superficial fluff, but it’s fun fluff.…
My God, they’ve done it yet again. Pixar is the best studio in Hollywood. They’ve made four movies, and they’re all great. The newest one, “Monsters, Inc.,” is a touch below the classic “Toy Story” movies, but it’s nonetheless wildly inventive, visually stunning and incredibly funny, as well as deeply touching. The story takes place in the bizarro Gotham of Monstropolis. Monsters Inc. is the local power company, which uses the screams of human children as fuel. The problem is, kids aren’t as easy to scare these days, so the company is dangerously low on power. Their #1 producer is…
“O Brother, Where Art Thou?” may not be the funniest or wackiest movie from Joel and Ethan Coen, but it is easily their most ambitious work to date (‘to date’ meaning August 2010, for those keeping score at home). Just breaking down the individual parts is enough to make one’s head spin; Homer’s “Odyssey,” set in rural Mississippi during the Great Depression, literate but sassy, with a handful of musical numbers for flavor. If anyone but the Coens had pitched that movie, they would have been laughed out of the room. Not even Baz Luhrmann would be able to get…