My brother reviews “Cloverfield.” I think he was a bit disappointed:

A good idea is at the heart of this film, that idea being to make a vérité creature feature: Blair Witch meets Godzilla, in Hollywood pitch meeting parlance. Document the peaceful denizens of a city as they come under attack by a monster of indeterminate origin. Conceptually, this is an intriguing start. With some irony, the actual start of the film - its opening moments - exemplifies everything that’s wrong with the picture: that the filmmakers decided to eschew their Good, Intriguing Idea in favor of the same tiresome shit.

Read the rest on your own.

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It seems my brother didn’t like the 1974 Sean Connery classic Zardoz. [Pretentious Musings] Oddly enough, I actually remember having seen it on TV.

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My brothers looks at the ‘93 film “Dazed and Confused” at Pretentious Musings.

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My brother liked “Grindhouse,” although he almost feels sorry for Robert Rodriguez [Pretentious Musings]. Interestingly, “Grindhouse” will be released as two separate movies here in Korea [Korea Pop Wars].

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My brother discusses his complicated feelings about the French and the film “L’Auberge Espagnole” [Pretentious Musings] Oh, and he also reviews “Babel.“

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Oh, and speaking of my brother, Pretentious Musings now has a downloadable widget for Mac OS 10.4 or higher, and his FAQ is up.

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My brother wasn’t particularly keen on John Cameron Mitchell’s controversial film “Shortbus” [Pretentious Musings]. Here’s the NOT WORK SAFE trailer [ifilm], for those who are interested.

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It seems my brother liked “The Prestige.” “It’s too bad about the ending - otherwise, the picture is an astutely-observed, periodically thrilling examination on duality and faith. To borrow a phrase from Carl Sagan, it’s a demon-haunted world; we explore it with candles, illuminating a small portion at a time.”

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My brother looks at “The Departed,” which the wife and I really enjoyed. But before that, he looks at “Back to the Future” (to return to the De Lorean theme)—”I’m tempted to call Back to the Future one of the more subversive films about the Reagan era, but that would imply intent.”

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It seems like my brother had issues with “Napoleon Dynamite”:

During the 19th century, Bethlem Psychiatric Hospital became a popular London attraction, particularly on the first Tuesday of every month when admission was free. All other days, visitors paid a penny to look into the cells of the insane and watch them fight and fornicate. Some tourists brought long rods to antagonize the patients and precipitate an entertaining response.

Today, we no longer poke lunatics with sticks. Don’t have to, as there are films like Napoleon Dynamite that do the poking for us and then record it for posterity. All we have to do is look, point, and laugh.
[...]
What is there to identify with in Napoleon Dynamite? Every time he is beaten, headlocked, or thrown into a locker, we chuckle: there is something about him that not only deserves to be humiliated buts wants to be. Napoleon Dynamite makes us the bully, not the bullied, a bizarre piece of masochism from Hess whose faux-redeeming ending can’t undo eighty minutes of figurative wedgie and latent racism - note how the film’s only latinos and blacks are incorporated into Napoleon’s coterie of half-wits. This is empowering for whom, exactly? Not the lunatics, but perhaps people with sticks.

Read the rest on your own.

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