All articles by Brent Simon – Page 14
-
Reviews
Pulse (Kairo)
Dir: Jim Sonzero. US. 2006. 86mins.The latest Americanisedremake in the still-burgeoning J-horror trend arrives in the form of thestrident and melodramatic Pulse, anonsensical thriller devoid of unified menace which quickly devolves into arather silly series of stylised, desultory jolts andartificial peril.With its dogged,demo-focused television advertising campaign and an absence of ...
-
Reviews
Barnyard: The Original Party Animals
Dir/scr: Steve Oedekerk. USA. 2006. 87minutes.The secret lives of farm animals get an energetic animatedworkout in writer-director Steve Oedekerk's Barnyard, a colourfulshowcase that sacrifices some of its narrative cogency for frenzied jamborees,pratfalls and musical montage-fed poignancy.With neither abroad TV advertising campaign nor top-shelf star voice talent, Barnyard will face tough ...
-
Reviews
The Ant Bully
Dir: John A Davis. US. 2006.87mins.Familiar tropes and jokes are trotted out in squirmingly obvious fashion with The Ant Bully, an intermittently sweetly moralisingbut rather lacklustre and ramshackle animated tale ofshifted perspective in which an adolescent is shrunk to the same size as theants in his front yard.Visually, the movierecalls ...
-
Reviews
Monster House
Dir: Gil Kenan. USA. 2006.89mins.Seemingly every neighbourhoodhas a house or two whose spooky reputation derives either from an owner neverglimpsed or else an atmosphere unnervingly caustic and weird. The animatedmovie Monster House takes this impressionto the extrapolated extreme in a slick, wholly rousing family adventure aboutthree pre-teens banding together to ...
-
-
Reviews
The Omen
Dir: JohnMoore. US. 2006. 106 minutes.More thanany other genre, horror film remakes can hew extremely closely to the plot ofthe original. Such is certainly the case with The Omen, John Moore's retread of director Richard Donner's 1976 chiller about the devil incarnate that also triesto by and large replicate much ...
-
Reviews
Akeelah And The Bee
Dir: Doug Atchison. US.2006. 112mins.The story of a young girl's unlikely journey from anunder-funded school to the National Spelling Bee finals, Akeelah And The Bee is an inspirational dramapowered by template familiarity and an abundance of earnestness. The winner ofthe 2000 Nicholl Fellowship, a screenwriting competitionsponsored by the Academy Of ...
-
Reviews
The Wild
Dir: Steve "Spaz" Williams.US. 2006. 84mins.The wilderness may be unmanageable and out ofcontrol, but Disney's The Wild is very much a beast offamiliarity, albeit a somewhat colorful one. Disney's rift with animationpartner Pixar now healed, it will be June release Cars that gets the bigger promotionalpush and is most likely ...
-
Reviews
Take The Lead
Dir: Liz Friedlander. US.2006. 118mins.The cathartic joy of dance gets drained away by thepredictable rhythms of formulaic and obvious storytelling in Take The Lead. Basedon the true story of a teacher's quest to impart the respect and dignity offormal dance to delinquent high schoolers, the debutfeature from music video director ...
-
Reviews
The Hills Have Eyes
Dir: Alexandre Aja. US. 2006. 107mins.Whether it's ironic or just emblematic of a generallack of imagination is open to debate, but everything old is new again inHollywood - or at least as it applies to the current trend of updated andrefashioned horror properties. The latest is The Hills Have Eyes, ...
-
Reviews
The Pink Panther
Dir: Shawn Levy. US. 2006. 95 minutes.Hollywood studio projection and analysisdepartments have rather crassly if understandably deemed remakes and franchisesthe surest thing going, even if one of the results is that there's often nocorrelative sense of joyful anticipation attached to these moviegoingexperiences. Owing to this and more, there's no particular ...
-
Reviews
Last Holiday
Dir: Wayne Wang. US. 2006.111mins.Queen Latifah came of age,as an actress, in 2002's Chicago (whichtook $306m worldwide) and the following spring's Bringing Down The House (a global $162m), which collectively helpedlaunch her film career into more rarified air.From her earliestdays, though - whether on her platinum-selling rap albums or in ...
-
Reviews
BloodRayne
Dir: Uwe Boll. US. 2006. 94mins.If there is an Ed Wood working in Hollywood todaythen surely it is film-maker Uwe Boll, who over thepast few years has made several critically panned videogame film adaptationsthat have floundered at the box office but done little to dent his career.His latestfeature, the avenging ...
-
Reviews
Fun With Dick And Jane
Dir: Dean Parisot. US. 2005. 89mins.For such a big star, Jim Carrey's career has featureda remarkably stark push-and-pull between appreciative audience reception andstubborn resistance to his whims. While his comedies as a leading man havetypically made a mint, more dramatic-minded turns in The Truman Show, Man On The Moon and ...
-
Reviews
The Producers
Dir: Susan Stroman. USA.2005. 135mins.The strange, zany trip of Mel Brooks' The Producers - which began in 1968 as amovie about a Broadway musical; morphed into a Tony-winning smash hit Broadwaymusical about a Broadway musical; and now reincarnates itself on film withalmost the entire creative team behind that stage adaptation ...
-
Reviews
The Family Stone
Dir: Thomas Bezucha. US. 2005. 104mins.The Family Stoneis a serio-comic story about the holiday gathering ofa chatty, mildly bickering bohemian New England brood, and the straight-lacedgirlfriend that the eldest son brings home. A sort of mash-up of The Myth OfFingerprints and Home For TheHolidays, it's also a rich reminder of ...
-
Reviews
Zathura
Dir: Jon Favreau. US. 2005. 100mins.Family features can often fall foul to several traps.One is that they end up as showcases for bedazzling special effects thatdominate the storytelling; another is that they rely on rote bodily function humour that may be funny to a six-year-old but is indicativeof lazy and ...
-
Reviews
Saw II
Dir: Darren Lynn Bousman. US. 2005. 97mins.A rushed-through-production sequel to the scream hitof last Halloween, Saw II has thejoint benefit and millstone of lowered expectation. It would be easy for thishorror sequel to be nothing more than a series of goosing, contrived deathsequences - which it is for the bulk ...
-
Reviews
Doom
Dir: Andrzej Bartkowiak. US. 2005. 101mins.Just as knowing one's own intellectual limitations isits own form of intelligence, so it is wise for a film to have a keen sense ofboundary and mission. Sometimes economy is the smartest choice, as Doom, the surprisingly enjoyable newadaptation of the wildly popular first-person videogame ...
-
Reviews
Doom
Dir: Andrzej Bartkowiak. US. 2005. 101mins.Just as knowing one's own intellectual limitations isits own form of intelligence, so it is wise for a film to have a keen sense ofboundary and mission. Sometimes economy is the smartest choice, as Doom, the surprisingly enjoyable newadaptation of the wildly popular first-person videogame ...