“Peter Jackson’s WWI Doc ‘They Shall Not Grow Old’ Is A Marvel On Every Level”

It took Peter Jackson over a decade, but he finally made a movie to match, and even outclass, his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy – a documentary about World War I, made as only a guy like Jackson could make it. Continue reading →

“‘Mowgli’ in the Shadow of ‘Lord of the Rings'”

It happens to us all: We crib, subconsciously, from the books and movies and shows and plays and such that make up our creative genetic material, whether when we’re writing our own books or movies or whatever, or writing about others’ books or movies or whatever. In the case of Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, that mental bleed wound … Continue reading →

Review: Deathgasm, 2015, dir. Jason Lei Howden

“It’s best to think of Jason Lei Howden’s Deathgasm as the spiritual kin of Brendon Small’s great Adult Swim seriesMetalocalypse. They’re both gleefully over-the-top odes to all things metal—from the music to its ethos and iconography. Metalocalypse ran from 2006 to 2012 before capping off with a one-hour rock opera in 2013 and focused on … Continue reading →

THE HOBBIT, Thorin Oakenshield, & Peter Jackson

“Of all the bad production decisions made in Peter Jackson’s loose adaptation of The Hobbit – gross overuse of CGI, check-list fan service, and a few instances of comically bad casting – the worst by far has been franchising. The Hobbit never needed to be more than one movie; it’s an example of either creative … Continue reading →

Review: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, 2014, dir. Peter Jackson

“Do you remember that pulse of excitement you felt when New Line and Warner Bros. first announced that they’d be adapting The Hobbit into a movie, a la The Lord of the Rings? Do you recall your anticipation as the project went, year by year, from being an idea to taking one step closer toward … Continue reading →

Go, See, Talk! Review: The Hobbit, 2012, dir. Peter Jackson

This all seems awfully familiar: it’s December, and a big-scale fantasy epic based on one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s essential landmark novels has been adapted to the screen by the man who directed Dead Alive. Forget that we’re trekking back to Middle Earth, the arrival of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is itself a return to a status quo … Continue reading →

15 Films ACVF Is Excited About In 2012

In my book, 2011 has been a great year for movies. Good stuff has abounded throughout this particular revolution of the planet, both on the side of light lifting– Limitless, Paul, Cedar Rapids, Captain America— and in the realms of more substantial material, such as Drive, Weekend, The Tree of Life, and Win Win. Even … Continue reading →

Review: The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, 2011, dir. Steven Spielberg

(Cross-posted over at GoSeeTalk.) While watching The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, you can feel Spielberg grinning happily on the other side of the camera. It’s a welcome quality; adapting Hergé’s beloved comic books to screen in the first of a planned series of films with collaborator Peter Jackson seems to have brought … Continue reading →

Review: The Lovely Bones, 2009, dir. Peter Jackson

If we’re left with but a single takeaway for Peter Jackson’s 2010 effort, The Lovely Bones, it’s that even a visionary director of Peter Jackson’s caliber has opportunity to soil their sheets with the lights on.  Make no mistake, The Lovely Bones— based on Alice Sebold’s novel of the same name– is nothing short of … Continue reading →

The Breaking of the Fellowship: Guillermo’s Departure From “The Hobbit”

Two weeks and change have passed since TheOneRing.net’s announcement of Guillermo del Toro’s decision to relinquish director’s duties on the adaptation of The Hobbit currently brewing in pre-production. With the initial impact of the unfavorable turn of events wearing off, the time seems ripe to examine the positives and the negatives of his departure. To … Continue reading →

The Cinematic Decade: My Top 25 of the 2000s (pt. 3)

Third verse, same as the first, Jackie is a punk, Judy is a runt. Entries 15-11, let’s go: 15. Up: The aughts have been pretty good years for Pixar– the studio has put out seven films in ten years, and of those films only one has displayed a poverty of creativity and wit (Cars), while … Continue reading →

The Cinematic Decade: My Top 25 of the 2000s (pt. 2)

This installment: Entries 20-16. Starting with: 20. Persepolis:  Visually sumptuous in the face of its stripped-down aesthetic, Persepolis is the autobiographical tale of Marjane Satrapi’s life growing  up in Iran and coming of age in the late 1970s. Told with a soft, elegant cell animated style, the film follows Marjane from her happy childhood spent … Continue reading →

Technology: 3D Dreams

3D at first slowly, and now much more rapidly, has become the new “it” gimmick in modern filmmaking. 2009 alone has given us numerous films in 3D presentations (Coraline, Up, My Bloody Valentine, The Final Destination*, among others), with more on the way before the year is out and even more still in the years … Continue reading →

District 9, 2009, dir. Neil Blomkamp

What would really happen if Earth was to come into contact with life extra-planetary? District 9, Neil Blomkamp’s from-left-field science fiction thriller/faux-doc, asks us this question, and provides some very unsettling answers– along with some of the most intelligent and satisfying entertainment to be found in the summer crop of seasonal blockbusters. District 9 tells … Continue reading →