All The King's Men "Watching "All the King's Men", it felt like there was a three hour film that Zaillian made and there was about an hour that was randomly cut out. What suffered was all semblance of any arc and character. What stayed in was an abundance of rhetoric and overwritten preachy dialogue. There are no two ways about it. This is a bad film. I don't know what Zaillian left on the cutting room floor, but he should go back to it and maybe he can save this from becoming the biggest disappointment of the Oscar season..." (full review)
Borat "Your enjoyment of this movie will depend on your own tolerance of this sort of stuff, and whether or not you already know and enjoy the character of Borat in the first place. As for the anti-Semitic stuff, I'll be interested to see if Jewish groups will be "up in arms" about this movie, since some of it is really, really bad - and even though the writer/actor is Jewish himself, that might not make a difference..." (full review)
Clerks 2 "On the whole it succeeds on the same sort of level that the first film worked on, as a guy living in this day and age, in his 20s. This film is geared more toward those people who still haven't found happiness or direction in their lives, despite being in their 30s, and all of the pressures/expectations that come with that. But before I make it all sound like a bore, trust me when I say that this film's primary motivation is jokes, laughs, gags and vulgarity galore..." (full review)
Fast Food Nation "None of the stories in the film are interesting (except one), the ultimate lack of connection between them all is surprising and worst of all, it all just felt like a school lesson to me, taught by a condescending know-it-all. I wasn't entertained by this film, I wasn't engaged by this film and I definitely did not learn anything from this film, as I imagine it was trying to teach me something..." (full review)
Marie Antoinette "I think the film would have worked even better with about 20-30 minutes cut from it though. Like I said earlier, the story basically isn't much, just a "few years in the life of the Queen" as she parties it up and has some kids later on, but the film's technical merits are uber-impressive..." (full review)
Miami Vice "The biggest problem I had with the movie was the plot. It was pretty straight forward and predictable. It was good, I just would have liked a little more mystery or some twists. The action in the movie leans more on the realistic side of things.There's no over the top car chases or explosions. I found that aspect of it to be quite refreshing..." (full review)
Pan's Labyrinth "Despite mixing up some elements from various other productions that have come before it, it ultimately comes across as wholly original, with a script written by the director himself, combining a children's fairy tale with sinister themes, monsters and killings, all of which make the movie a brilliant adult fantasy flick with a surprising amount of humanity to boot..." (full review)
Smokin' Aces "While I'm not sure if Joe Carnahan has truly found his own style just yet, he seems to be learning from his own set of favorite directors and has crafted a really solid version of their work. Where he does excel is with the comic interactions between mismatched characters and with some of the most brutal gunfights I've seen in a while..." (full review)
Southland Tales "Where do I begin describing the unmitigated disaster that is Richard Kelly's highly anticipated follow-up to his cult hit "Donnie Dark" without turning this into a 10-paragraph rant about how pissed I am that Kelly took his obvious smarts and used it for his own purposes, while thinking very little about a little something called "the audience"..." (full review)
