Review: SHERLOCK HOLMES: GAME OF SHADOWS

           The first installment of these Victorian-super-secret-agent Sherlock Holmes re-imaging had a plot impossible to understand. This second installment fixes that problem by having a plot you don’t really need to understand; there is a clear villain whom Sherlock needs to confront. Everything else is frivolous set dressing, and action sequences done in slow motion. It is fun, but it isn’t the inquisitive thriller you would expect from a movie based of the adventures of an inquisitive detective. Like its predecessor this is simply a modern action movie, not very different from Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, done in costume; in MI: 4 we saw Tom Cruise dangling off the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building today; in Holmes 2 we get to see Robert Downey Jr, dangling off a train over what is an impossibly tall bridge.

Review: FALL/WINTER 2011

            So once again it is January and usually we end up writing a top-ten column like every other movie blog out there. However, this year I’ve been writing a top-five column for every season of the year (you can check the spring and summer column here and here). So I guess it is time to review this years Fall/Winter season. I am grouping the fall/winter into a single column for a few reasons: firstly, because the Spring and Summer seasons were each four months long, so the third season should also be four months, and secondly because the Holiday/winter/Award season is usually only attributed to the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and it would be insane to cram a whole season of movie watching into one month. Thus we have the fall/winter season of 2011 here.

Review: THE DESCENDANTS

This is my favorite of all of George Clooney's characters. In The Descendants, Clooney is not awesome. He is not a badass. He doesn't have a charming smile (mostly because I don't think he smiles once in this movie). In The Descendants, George Clooney plays a character. And for The Descendants, he deserves an Oscar.

Review: THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN

Steven Spielberg was born to direct animation. He's easily one of the most cinematically creative people of all time, and The Adventures of Tintin is mind-blowing showcase of what movies would look like if Spielberg was not limited to the restrictions of live-action. The Adventures of Tintin is, if nothing else, Steven Spielberg without limits.

Review: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL

The first thing I will point out in my comments about the newest installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise is that the above image is not green-screened. Tom Cruise really did this.

SO THAT'S COOL I GUESS.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is easily the best installment of the franchise and I find it hard to believe any upcoming sequels will top it. Brad Bird - one of my all-time favorite filmmakers - has revived a franchise I would have considered dead with an excellent action movie that I would never have expected to enjoy as much as I did.

Review: EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE

I knew a guy with much more intense Asperger's Syndrome than the hero of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, and he was nowhere near as mean-spirited and horrible as this kid. The guy I knew was one of the most genuine people I ever met. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close uses this character in a failing experiment for the two hours that it runs. This is a movie that wants us to feel much more than we are given.