Taken: dooming teenagers worldwide to clampdowns on travel by their paranoid parents, who believe that kidnappers lie at every foreign turn. Silkwood proves that horror movies are scarier when they feel like a part of life, especially one you haven’t the means to escape. Ratatouille: Anyone (who can reconstruct whole recipes from scratch with just a whiff) can cook. Public Enemies: Retreads Bonnie and Clyde, laced with the irony that even America’s Most Wanted doesn’t beat its citizens’ self-absorption. Paranormal Activity: Oscillates like Julie & Julia between its annoying and gratifying plots, but with demons (actual v boyfriend) not cooks Paper Heart: Shades of When Harry Met Sally, with clever, disciplined use of the handheld trope. Moon: “Thoughtful scifi” for beginners: promising premise, predictable plotting. Katong Fugue: How is it that celluloid pianos so readily channel their player’s inner desires? (c.f. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Sturdy pulp movie, with stars (Ford, Connery, Phoenix) that knew they were stars, and how to act as stars.

Rowling’s missed dramatic opportunities keep thwacking me in the face.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Potter fatigue has caught up to me all of J.K. Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire, Hepburn in Long Day’s Journey into Nightįighting: A formula film without the formula’s best parts: the sweat-soaked anticipation, the thrill of the win, or, y’know, the actual fighting.įunny Girl: Nearly a revue meant to showcase Streisand’s talents at belting and rapid-fire line delivery Streisand redefines stardom. Here are my Twitter posts on some of the movies I caught in the past year:ĭistrict 9: Bracing as a quasi-documentary on alien immigrants, and as a horror film on unwanted transformations opaque as an action flick.ĭouble Indemnity: I just don’t get classic actresses playing hysterics.

Xkcd tiny piano