The Amazing Race, which recently dropped its first season on DVD, is one of these types of shows. Ostensibly, it’s about a race around the world, but when one watches the show (and it IS incredibly addictive), one finds an examination of just how “ugly†Americans can be when they travel…
On the one hand, I realize I may not appreciate it the way fans of the series do. On the other hand, I do love science-fiction considerably, and have since childhood. Thus, I may be far more critical than the average viewer because I have seen enough sci-fi that doesn’t stand up to normal dramatic standards and I’d like to see more that does. Though it takes some time…
Two men exit what appears to be a motel. As they approach the car, one of them is getting prepared to leave. He drives up a few feet, and then stops. This is an interesting shot, both because it’s setting an unusually comical tone for such a serious film, and because the camera, in a medium-wide profile shot, stays locked to the car’s movement…
Somewhere over the Caribbean, a plane goes down in a storm. Our only indication of the nature of the occupants and cargo is a man toting a gun who, along with the pilots, gets bounced about and killed when the plane crashes. Naturally, this will be important later, but right now, we must move on to the fat guy swimming upside down—presumably learning snorkeling from…
“Proof” opens looking in on a house at night. It’s raining outside, and the television is on. The window is cloaked in rain, obscuring the interior a bit. The scene cuts to the interior and reveals Catherine Llewelyn (Gwyneth Paltrow) flipping channels—sometimes the television’s. The scene abruptly changes to a university. Catherine bumps into…
There is a richness of detail in stop animation of which Tim Burton has become, inarguably, a master craftsman. Tim Burton has invited us back to a time before cinema became inundated with computer graphics. I’m not saying that computer graphics can’t be innovative, but now that every studio and nearly every major film employs it in some fashion or another…
The film opens in Germany, at a train station in Alexanderplatz. The scene intercuts between Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster) at the train station, and flashbacks to a morgue and then her husband’s coffin. Ominously rumbling piano notes and a cutaway to birds suggest that this isn’t an ordinary…
The film is replete with its share of bodily fluid jokes, flatulence jokes, physical humor and, uh, an act involving fish you don’t want to know about. While McCarthy does well with some of the physical humor (she could be hilarious in stand-up), the slapstick is sporadic and the funnier moments are so sparse. The story itself is…