Doctor Who Nostalgia

I ran across a cache of Doctor Who episodes from the first Peter Davison season. He’s always been my favorite, and it was a treat to think about watching his adventures from the beginning. Oh, I was so misguided. The first, Castrovalva, was terrible. I remembered them getting trapped in a town square that became wrapped around itself like an Escher image. That was still there, briefly, but I had to get through an awful lot of “oh, my regeneration […]

Read more

Bones: The Superhero in the Alley

A body is found in an alley. It’s a badly decomposed skeleton that indicates a fall or push from a high building, and next to it is found a maggot-ridden graphic novel. (“It’s a comic book” explains one of the resident geeks on the investigative team.) I typically watch Bones anyway, because I enjoy the interplay between Emily Deschanel’s straightforward forensic anthropologist (nicknamed “Bones”) and David Boreanaz’s FBI agent. This one, though, had friends at work asking me the day […]

Read more

Kiki’s Delivery Service

Continuing to sample the works of Miyazaki, I tried Kiki’s Delivery Service. Upon the advice of my readers, I watched the subtitled instead of dubbed version, and I agree, Phil Hartman as the voice of the cat would have been too distracting. Although I’ve only seen a couple of Miyazaki films, I could already identify his common themes here: spirited young woman unsure of her skills meets neighbor boy fascinated by her strength and with unusual interest of his own. […]

Read more

My Neighbor Totoro/Whisper of the Heart

I’ve been hearing how much I need to see Miyazaki’s films for a long while now, so I used the Turner Classic Movies showings to sample two. The first, My Neighbor Totoro, was fluffier than I expected. I knew that the movie was about two girls who meet a fantasy character, but I was surprised that the first third of the film was simply about them setting up housekeeping out in the country. The images were beautiful, as expected, but […]

Read more

Sin City

Man oh man, what is Frank Miller’s fascination with male genital mutilation? Yes, Sin City was exactly what I expected: heaping lumps of testosterone-soaked sexism portrayed in visually interesting ways. What I didn’t expect was how often my husband and I laughed at the overwrought voiceovers. I hated the text, but I enjoyed the film. Although when it was over, he asked me if I’d seen A Clockwork Orange. I said yes, why? He responded that this felt like what […]

Read more

Christmas in Connecticut

Christmas in Connecticut is my favorite holiday movie. Every time I see it, I love it more. From 1945, Barbara Stanwyck plays that generation’s Martha Stewart, a famous magazine writer who’s always describing her farmhouse, her delicious gourmet meals, and her loving husband and baby. Problem is, she has none of those things. She’s a working woman who can’t cook but buys herself a mink because she’s always wanted one. When a war hero writes her publisher saying all he […]

Read more

Fantastic Four: The Movie

I know the Fantastic Four movie wasn’t all that popular with comic fans, but I liked it. It was exactly what I expected, an enjoyable summer action movie with comic book characters. Some random thoughts: Reed Richards really was portrayed as the “world’s dumbest smart guy”, as Doom said. He didn’t seem to do much of anything in this film; everything was someone else’s invention or choice or accident. He was pretty to look at, but that got boring quickly. […]

Read more

Labyrinth

My gracious, I do love Labyrinth. I just watched the DVD again, and I always forget how engrossing it is. David Bowie turns in a superb performance as the Goblin King, scary and exotic and attractive and magical all at once. The older I get, the more patience I have with Jennifer Connelly’s performance, too. Once I thought she was much too wooden, just something existing for the creatures to dance around, but she seems more subtle to me these […]

Read more
1 116 117 118 119