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Review of 300 - ***
Published 03-11-2007 12:37 PM | Mark
300 is a fantasy representation of one of Western Civilization's most momentous events: the battle of Thermopylae . In this battle, a small army of Greeks - led by the Spartan king Leonidas and his hand-picked group of 300 warriors - held off a massive...
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Review of The Departed - 0 stars
Published 03-02-2007 10:05 PM | Mark
The Departed is yet another tired exercise in nihilistic self-indulgence. The best that can be said about it is that it's watchable, which, these days, is a rare feat for director Martin Scorsese. Scorsese is loved by Hollywood because he has a knack...
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X-Men: The Lask Stand review - *
Published 06-30-2006 6:06 PM | Mark
The latest iteration of the X-Men movies, though handed off to a new director (Brett Ratner), is a worthy successor to the first two films, and is about as good as either of them. As usual, the film follows the exploits of a group of mutant humans who...
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Review of King Kong - 0 stars
Published 06-10-2006 11:19 AM | Mark
King Kong is an overly long and somewhat pretentious film from Peter Jackson , director of the Lord of the Rings movies. Like Lord of the Rings, the movie is a special effects bonanza, and like LotR, boredom creeps in as spectacle replaces plot far too...
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Review of Mission Impossible: 3 - 0 stars
Published 05-21-2006 1:28 PM | Mark
Tom Cruise has a unique way of running that I'm sure he has spent a lot of time honing to perfection. The last two Cruise movies I've seen - War of the Worlds and MI:3 - have both prominently showcased Cruise's running style. Rarely, in MI:3, does an...
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Review of the movie Chronicles of Narnia - *
Published 05-16-2006 9:52 PM | Mark
When I was a child, C.S. Lewis' Narnia Chronicles were among my favorite books. But it's been more than 20 years since I last read them, so I can't say how close the film is to the book it's based on, [WIKIPEDIA: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe...
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Review of Sharpe's Rifles - **
Published 05-14-2006 3:53 PM | Mark
I enjoyed watching Sharpe's Rifles today, the first movie in a series of 14 (Hurrah for the Netflix queue!). Based on the novels of [WIKIPEDIA: Bernard Cornwell], the series follows the military career of Richard Sharpe , a low ranking officer fighting...
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Review of Doom - 0 stars
Published 03-27-2006 7:05 PM | Mark
Doom was the seminal PC game. It defined the first person shooter genre and illustrated that the PC could do things with games that no console could. What a shame, with all its hard earned glory, that in its latest iteration it is no more than a half...
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The rating system explained in full
Published 02-24-2006 10:23 PM | Mark
My 0-4 star ranking system is a bit unusual and requires explanation. It is adopted from the system used by the late Ernest Halliwell in his Filmgoer's Companion. My purpose is to correct the deficiencies of conventional ranking systems. In conventional...
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Review of The Island - 0 stars
Published 02-06-2006 9:23 PM | Mark
The Island is a Michael Bay film. If you are familiar with Bay's other work - Bad Boys, Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, to name his 'seminal' pieces - then you have a good idea of what to expect. Expensive things like cars and helicopters will explode in ways...
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