Vonna is a fan of this franchise, and as a result I had seen the (CG) animated films, and some episodes of the cartoon series. It's a blurred line when we talk about live-action adaptations of animated features, particularly when so much of the film is animated... and perhaps more appropriate to refer to them as photo-realistic animated features. In this case, the Dragons are very well rendered, and match the look and feel of the animated films/series, while seamlessly…
Robert DeNiro, Morgan Freeman, and Tommy Lee Jones. How exactly does a film with that cast fly under my radar? Let alone a film about low-budget filmmaking? Well, I guess that can be blamed in part to its sitting on a shelf for about five years. Producer DeNiro owes money to mobster Morgan Freeman, and decides the best way to raise the money he needs to pay off his debts AND finance his dream project is not by making a popular film, but by killing his suicidal star (Jones) and collecting the insurance money. It's no Get Shorty, but it has its moments.
Had the pleasure of revisiting Empire in a grand palace on the occasion of the film's 45th anniversary tonight. Yes, it was the special edition, which means ignoring a few brief sequences (the added wampa footage at the beginning, and Vader's long walk to his shuttle at the end), but that's not enough to lessen the overall power of this amazing sequel. What particularly stood out in this viewing were the amazing performances by Ford and Fisher, and banter they…
This title, and the quotes comparing it favorably to the works of Spielberg and J.J. Abrams, ultimately works against it. It's not a bad movie, but it does not live up to the comparison to Close Encounters, and despite only having watched a handful of episodes from the first season of Stranger Things, I think that comparison is similarly a stretch. I've also seen comparisons to Interstellar, E.T. and Nope. And it pales in comparison to each and every one…
