This is not your conventional holiday film. It doesn’t exploit emotions for the sake of drawing tears from the audience, nor does it shove the whole holiday theme down our throats, this is an independent film with a holiday theme that tends to focus more on the actual character within the general theme of the holidays. What’s shown is an array of colorful and somewhat eccentric character dealt into an engrossing story of family and values. If you’re sick and tired of the usual holiday fare, check this out. It’s a great story about family and holidays. “Pieces of April” we learn is symbolic of the main character April’s attempts at making amends with her family. It’s alluded that she was a troubled girl so, not only does the story become a quest for April to finish her meal, but it becomes a quest to prove to her family that she’s reformed.
Blade: Trinity (2004)
This review is being written at a good time for me, not only because I dug the last two Blade films, but because of the lawsuit Wesley Snipes has just waged on the studios about this movie. Snipes is a known diva, if you’ve read the past issues of “Fangoria” and “Starlog”, though his co-stars and director Goyer don’t openly admit it, Snipes is known for being a diva, and now he seeks retribution for a movie he claims he didn’t want to make, for starring along side people he didn’t want to star with being directed by a director who he says was forced on him. Regardless, I didn’t think “Blade 3” would live up to the first two. People often say there’s hardly any sequels that are as good as the first film, but I have something better for you. How many second sequels are better than the first film?
Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi) (2001)
“Spirited Away” has had the unfortunate distinction of being compared to “Alice in Wonderland”, and while they bear similarities in themes, characters, and oddities, but Miyazaki’s animated tale is highly superior. Miyazaki takes us into an incredible land of creatures, landscapes and spooky villains, along the injecting truly heartfelt emotions, and thematic undertones. Miyazaki’s animation and storytelling bear an aspect sorely missing in American animated films, which heart, and true sincerity. Chihiro and her parents are on the way to their new home, and while driving they stumble upon a weird tunnel. Curious, they enter the tunnel and end up in a magical field and begin journeying into a village. But when Chihiro discovers her parents have been turned into pigs, she finds that there may be no going back where came from.
Toolbox Murders (2004)
I’ll admit “The Toolbox Murders” will never win any awards in the horror field, but as a piece of pure mindless horror with gore galore, I dug it a lot simply for its schlock value, and so-stupid-it’s-good fun. When Nell and Steven move to Hollywood after Steven, a doctor gets a job at the local hospital, their apartment building is less than luxurious, and Nell has an instant uneasy feeling about the vibe of the building and has no idea there are murders going on all around her. She can hear and feel its bad atmosphere despite the landlord’s boasting that it’s just a Hollywood landmark, but once she begins suspecting her friends being murdered around her she delves into the shocking underbelly of the landmark and discovers its grizzly secret.
New York Minute (2004)
Why anyone would still find the Olsen Twins even remotely appealing is still beyond me, unless you find spoiled, rotten, rich girls appealing, then perhaps they’re for you. Luckily, “New York Minute” was a flop and I had a good laugh, but let’s face it, they laughed all the way to the bank. It’s clear judging by the movie that the Olsen’s have zero talent, and they prove just because you can buy yourself into a movie doesn’t mean you should be in one. Nonetheless, this is not a movie to be taken seriously even by someone as uptight about movies as me, but as harmless as this tries to be, you can’t also escape the fact this is a basic rip-off of “Ferris Bueller”, a much much better movie with an actual believable premise, where as this is basically driven on the vanity of the Olsen twins.
Directors Ruining Hollywood
As a movie lover and one time wannabe filmmaker, I’m a picky person, and as a person who appreciates the fine are of filmmaking or what was once known as filmmaking, it’s very hard to find a good director these days in this cultural wasteland and utterly creatively challenged industry, but among the rare good visionary directors, there are plenty of bad directors whom are basically ruining the art of filmmaking under their siege. Here are a list of directors that are tarnishing filmmaking.
With this article, I ask to them, stop. Stop what you’re doing and go away.
Comfort and Joi [Paperback]
A dissection of film theaters which are compared to airport terminals, general disillusionment with movie-going and how the magic is gone, musings on pop culture and lack thereof, the disappearance of our pop culture traditions that spawned a generation of well cultured masses. All in one-hundred and thirty pages? How is that accomplished? In one utterly engrossing passage, Dougherty riffs on how directing and making a film, which was once such a demanding task, is now reduced to a mere mundane ability thanks to technology. Author Dougherty makes two things clear during this novel; that Joi was both an actress with great potential who never reached the upper echelons of Hollywood royalty she had the potential to reach due to circumstances that were both beyond her control and due to her own behavior, and she was very beautiful.