Road to Perdition Is A Crime Thriller That Sticks With You

It’s amazing what a difference a hat can make. Like a pair of glasses, a person can look totally different whenever they’re wearing them. Take Tom Hanks in Road to Perdition for instance. When he’s wearing a low-tipped hat covering the upper part of his face in this movie, he totally looks older, weary and menacing. Those aren’t words one usually associates with Hanks, but they totally come to mind when his character, Michael Sullivan, dons a hat. Whenever he takes that hat off, though, a magical transformation occurs. Suddenly, Hanks is back to looking boyish and charming, like it hasn't been a day since Turner & Hooch. What a difference a hat can make.

The Difficulties of Filmmaking Are On Full Display In Lost in La Mancha

Filmmaking is a tough business. Getting any film off the ground is a tricky affair nothing short of a miracle. If problems aren't arising because of difficulting securing finances, there are issues with schedules, securing equipment, getting costumes ready, the challenges are endless. Whether you're doing a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie or a scrappy short film in your backyard, getting a film put together is an immense undertaking and nobody knows that better than Terry Gilliam. The acclaimed director has made a number of beloved motion pictures, but a number of his prospective movies never managed to get off the ground, or, in the case of a 2000 version of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, started filming only to never get finished.

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron Doesn't Trust Either Its Audience or Animation Enough

From the get-go, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron struck me as an attempt to do a Western version of Bambi. This was mainly because Spirit was also a tale of relatively non-anthropomorphized animals wandering around in the woodlands with a darker tone. Whereas Bambi committed to its darker tone (oh, did it ever), Spirit has trouble actually letting its more somber elements get executed properly. Nobody's expecting an animated kids movies from DreamWorks to achieve the bleakness of a Robert Bresson movie, but Spirit constantly struggles to achieve effective moments of poignancy because it never allows those moments to be as restrained as they should be. It constantly beats you over the head with its intent instead of letting the emotions sweep over you.

Lynne Ramsay And Samantha Morton Deliver A Mesmerizing Portrait of Coping With Grief In The Excellent Morvern Callar

And so, having now finally watched Morvern Callar, I've seen all four of Lynne Ramsay's feature-film directorial effort. Though Morvern Callar might be the weakest of Ramsay's movies, that's a lot like saying that a specific Carly Rae Jepsen song is her weakest. Jepsen's songs, like Ramsay's directorial efforts, are just varying degrees of exceptional, there really isn't a dud in the bunch. This Morvern Callar is yet another impressive and harrowing piece of filmmaking from one of the best directors working today, one that sees Ramsay turning her artistic focus on people's mental-based struggles in the wake of tragedy onto the story of a woman grappling with her boyfriend's suicide.

Tragedies of the Past Fascinatingly Impact the Present in 25th Hour

For a filmmaker as immersed in New York City as Spike Lee, there was no way the tragic events of 9/11 wouldn't impact his work in some profound way. So it was that his 2002 film 25th Hour, his first directorial effort in the wake of 9/11, has this event looming over the proceedings like a dark storm cloud. From the opening credits set over footage of that famous pair of beams of light meant to represent the now gone Twin Towers, the influence 9/11 will have on what's to come in 25th Hour is apparent. Though this isn't a story explicitly about 9/11, it is a tale about how one harrowing event changes numerous New Yorkers life and over the course of one evening, explores how these individuals have responded to that event.

One Of The Most Chilling Robin Williams Performances Is Showcased In The Unnerving Feature One Hour Photo

In the age of YouTube and Vevo (though aren't they both technically one and the same now?), music videos have seen a modern-day resurgence now that the modern-day music video typically takes cues from the best examples of the artform in decades past as famous artists star in short films that expand upon the themes found in the lyrics of a specific song. In this resurgence, director Mark Romanek, who helmed, has returned to helming music videos after a nearly decade-long absence after directing some of the most famous music videos of the 1990's and early 2000's. Romanek may be most famous for his music video work, but he's also dabbled in directing feature films and his 2002 motion picture One Hour Photo shows he also has skill in this arena of filmmaking as well.

Before They Directed Avengers: Infinity War, The Russo Brothers Directed A Subversion of Heist Movies Titled Welcome To Collinwood

Between placing Captain America into a political thriller or filtering a paintball battle between the lead characters of the show Community through the prism of a spaghetti Western, it's clear directors Anthony and Joe Russo enjoy juxtaposing specific genres with characters you might not expect to inhabit those specific genres. This recurring fixture of their work can be clearly seen in their 2002 directorial effort Welcome To Collinwood, which takes the premise of a typical heist movie and has it led by a gaggle of unorthodox characters that are the polar opposite of conventional lead characters in traditional heist movies.

Super Troopers Isn't Highly Exceptional But It Has Its Share of Solid Laughs

So now that Super Troopers 2 didn't work out, let's go back in time and look at how exactly the first Super Troopers holds up. Despite being a widely beloved comedy, I had not seen this debut motion picture from the Broken Lizard comedy troop until this past Friday. Having now seen it, I'm afraid I can't count myself as one of the devotees of this specific movie, but more happily, I also cannot count myself as one who has disdain for this original Super Troopers. This original Super Troopers is a decently humorous movie with some memorable gags even if it can't quite sustain itself for its 100-minute runtime.

Pardon The Obvious Pun, But Lady Bird Absolutely Soars

I love it when an opening scene of a movie just perfectly encapsulates what kind of movie you're about to watch. You only get one shot at a first impression after all and when a feature film is able to come out of the gate swinging with a few minutes of footage that sums up the identity of what's to come so concisely, well, it's a real treat to experience. Lady Bird has this kind of opening sequence, one that depicts our lead character, Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) and her mom Marion McPherson (Laurie Metcalf) driving home from a visit to a nearby college. We get a chance to see these two united in being captivated by an audiobook recording of John Steinbeck's classic novel The Grapes of Wrath but once that's done, it isn't long before friction emerges between the two of them.

Insomnia Has A Great Robin Williams Performance And Some Overly Predictable Elements

Compared to other entries in Christopher Nolan's filmography, Insomnia can't help but feel a bit routine in execution. Now, the film overall is actually pretty entertaining, a well-done cat-and-mouse crime thriller with one particularly strong performance I'll talk about later, but compared to the narrative audaciousness of fellow Nolan movies Dunkirk or Memento and even just considered on its own merits, Insomnia feels more paint-by-numbers in concept and execution of said concept. But even paint-by-numbers can be plenty fine when the paint looks pretty and Insomnia most certainly has some super colorful elements that help stand out.

THAR BE GOLD IN THEM STARS: Treasure Planet (Lovefest Entry #2)

Lovefest is an annual tradition done by the Dissolve community wherein people do extensive reviews and defenses of movies they love that have garnered a more negative public reception. This year, Douglas Laman decided to take a look at the 2002 Ron Clement and John Musker movie Treasure Planet.

At this point, the canon of films made by Walt Disney Animation Studios is so dense (it contain 56 films as of this writing) that you’ve got all kinds of different types of movies in regards to how much success they had. You’ve got your out-and-out hits (Frozen, The Lion King, The Jungle Book), you’ve got your bombs that got reappraised as classics (Fantasia and Sleeping Beauty) and then you’ve got your features that bombed but developed a cult following over the years. Hercules and The Emperor’s New Groove most certainly belong in this category as does (to a far lesser degree) the subject of this Lovefest review, Treasure Planet.

Plenty Of Well-Done Musical Numbers Pop Up In Chicago, Though, Sadly, There's No Pizza

We've had plenty of "ladies-in-prison" movies in the history of cinema, to the point that it's become its own subgenre so ubiquitous it inspired a fake trailer on Grindhouse. Such a concept has endured so much that it's even eeked over into television with Orange Is The New Black being a hugely popular show for four years now. Despite the huge amount of content fixated on the idea of women getting into shenanigans in prison, I doubt any other piece of "ladies-in-prison" pop culture is quite like the 2002 Rob Marshall movie Chicago, which is based on a hugely popular and long-running Broadway musical of the same name.

Uber Endearing Fun And Cool Dragon Action Make Reign Of Fire A Real Treat!

There were a bunch of high-quality blockbusters that made heaps of cash in the summer of 2002, such as the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man movie (still one of the high points of superhero cinema), Lilo & Stitch and Minority Report. But you did have a bunch of outright abysmal movies also selling lots of tickets (a phenomenon far from uncommon in the summertime), such as the worst Star Wars movie, Attack Of The Clones, that live-action Scooby-Doo abomination and a middling Men In Black sequel. It's a pity those three duds were able to ride brand name recognition to major success while the vastly superior original movie Reign Of Fire had to settle for box office scraps.

Disney Byways: THE COUNTRY BEARS

For this week's Disney Byways column, regular writer Gillianren has graciously allowed Douglas Laman (NerdInTheBasement) to fill in for her. Being a major Disney nerd himself, Doug is extremely grateful for this opportunity and hopes not to muck things up while Gillianren is briefly away!

Hollywood loves to create imitations of what's successful. This has been true for decades upon decades, so it might strike some as puzzling that Disney has actually done only two movies based on their theme park attractions (The Haunted Mansion and Tomorrowland) ever since those Pirates Of The Caribbean movies took off like a flash. While we sometimes hear rumblings of a Jungle Cruise movie (they've been trying to get that made for over a decade now) or Guillermo Del Toro's Haunted Mansion project, Disney seems to be in no rush to do a bevy of motion pictures based on their universally beloved theme park attractions.

Spider-Man Review

For 50 years, the thought had crept into the minds of everyone across the planet...what would a Spider-Man movie look like? For some, it was just a passing mental diversion, a notion that would fade as quickly as it came. For others, it was a concept that persisted in their cranium, imagining what the web-crawler would look like in the realm of live-action cinema. Considering how much of a grip Spider-Man had had on pop culture, it's understandable why such a proposal would have inhabited the imaginations of billions of individuals around the world. The comic book saga of meek Peter Parker gaining superhero abilities had emerged as one of the great modern-day fictional media creations.

Film On The Television (10/12/2015): Scooby-Doo on HBO Family

In that bygone era of 2002, the novelty of beloved cartoon characters existing in our world via a mixture of live-action and CGI was as pure as America's love for Freddie Prinze Jr. Thus, it comes as no shock that Scooby-Doo, which brought that Great Dane to the "real world", proved to be a huge box office success. Co-starring Buffy The Vampie Slayer, Laura Barton and Mr. Bean, the movie proved to be a dream come true for Warner Bros. stockholders and a nightmare-inducer for children everywhere. 

Adaptation Review (Classic Write-Up)

Adaptation Is The Sincerest Form of Flattery

A meta approach to a film or TV show or any piece of media is not uncommon, but it is unique for it to be embraced as heartily as it is by Adaptation, a 2002 Spike Jonze directed feature that goes absolutely all in when it comes to utilizing this style of storytelling. How exactly does the movie engage in a meta narrative you ask? Why, by focusing on an exaggerated version of the films screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage). 

Franchise Frenzy: Ice Age

Welcome to Franchise Frenzy! Every other week I post a column analyzing the quality and pop culture impact of a certain Hollywood franchise. This week, I put on a winter coat in July in order to make my way through the Ice Age franchise.

In 2002, CGI animated films were scarce, with DreamWorks only having released two of them at that point, Disney Animation doing only one and even PIXAR only having four of them under their belt at that point. Aside from the occasional Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, the landscape for CGI animated features was vacant. Enter Blue Sky Studios, whose first feature Ice Age became the cornerstone of the company. They've very rarely stepped outside of that franchise comfort zone (pity too, as aside from Rio, their other non-Ice Age movies range from diverting to endlessly charming), but if every single entry in this series was as strong as the original, I doubt any of us would complain. 

So, I Was On Netflix: Punch-Drunk Love

Each Tuesday I review a film that can be found on Netflix Instant Streaming. This week, I take a gander at Adam Sandlers 2002 foray into the world of dramatic acting.

Me and Adam Sandler don't get along...at all. But I had constantly heard good things about his dramatic work, which he's dabbled in occasionally (he hasn't done that since 2009, but he is in two upcoming dramas that should be out sometime in 2014 or 2015) I was dubious, solely because the likes of Grown Ups 2 did not inspire confidence that this guy could do more than somehow con the likes of Shaquille O'Neal to appear in his flicks on a consistent basis.

Country Music Spotlight: Joe Nichols

Joe Nichols has a peculiar career pattern in not just the world of country music, but in the entire artform of music. That pattern consists of him creating a No. 1 single, then a few lower charting singles, before creating another No. 1 hit that takes over the radio. His two most recent singles seem to be bucking that trend, with one hitting No. 1 at the end of 2013, and his newest tune (Yeah) heading towards that number by August.