watching movies one cup at a time

88 Minutes stars Al Pacino as Dr. Jack Gramm, a college professor and a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI. A series of murders are being committed that match the work of a serial killer on death row whom Gramm help send to prison. When Gramm receives a death threat claiming he has only 88 minutes to live, he uses his skills and training to try and narrow down the possible suspects and the connection to the murders before his time runs out. Alicia Witt, Leelee Sobieski, Amy Brenneman and Neal McDonough also star.

To say this movie is getting ripped to shreds by the critics would be an understatement. Metacritic.com, which compiles reviews from movie critics around the world, has ranked the film at #3 on their All-Time lowest review scores. Having seen the film, I must say that while it is far from being a good movie, I don’t feel it deserves to be so vilified. I can easily think of several recent films that are much worse (Thanks again, Dane Cook). Perhaps it’s because Al Pacino is considered to be such a good actor, with a list of several incredible film roles, that makes this movie seem so much worse than the movies out there that are expected to suck. For an Oscar-winning actor with such credibility, this is a remarkably weak movie. Read the rest of this entry »

The vampire has got to be the most overused and clichéd movie monster. There have been so many vampire movies and TV shows that there is an established common understanding of what they are and what they’re limitations are. Movies don’t need to fill in any details about vampires, the audience knows them all too well. The original 30 Days Of Night graphic novel had an interesting approach. If vampires can’t be in the sunlight, why not let them loose in a place where there is no sunlight for months. Unfortunately movie versions of comic books don’t often work because they can’t tell the story in the way it was originally intended. Movies have to condense the story and make it more Hollywood so the producers who are spending $32 million make their money back. Read the rest of this entry »

Zombies movies these days are very cliché. Zombie culture since George Romero first created the contemporary vision of the living dead has gotten so oversaturated that the movie-going is getting numb to the whole idea and we are now seeing movies making fun of the clichés (like the brilliant Shawn Of The Dead). It’s almost as bad as vampires. So what makes 28 Days Later interesting is the fact that in essence it is a zombie movie, yet there isn’t one zombie in the whole thing. Read the rest of this entry »