Epinions Recent Reviews for bill_chambers

As Time Goes By: "Groundhog Day" (incls. SE-DVD details)

Tue, 29 Jan 2002 19:10:03 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - I've heard the argument that Groundhog Day fails because it proposes the redemption of world-class crank Bill Murray. But, boy, does redemption fight an uphill battle against him; I suspect the criticism is misdirected at the prolific cinema of...

"Lounge" Lizards

Mon, 21 Jan 2002 00:01:48 GMT

rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - "He is the straightest and most law-abiding citizen...in the world!" Wendy Barnet (Brandy Ledford), assessing her husband's degree of innocence to a police detective

Zebra Lounge zips shut the body bag around Stephen Baldwin's...

Drive the Chevy to the Levy Instead (incls. unrated DVD details)

Fri, 18 Jan 2002 18:50:50 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - If American Pie was the nineties' answer to the teen genre of eighties cinema, then American Pie 2 revives the sitcom format of that same decade. It starts and it finishes, logging hours but not progress. That made the film awfully...

The "Road" to Nowhere (incls. DVD details)

Fri, 18 Jan 2002 05:16:05 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - The pictures do the talking in The Road Home; it is like Zhang's last film, Not One Less, without the pretence of docudrama. There's almost no way to discuss it except to gawk verbally, which isn't a shame exactly (the world can always use...

America's Sweethearts vs. Legally Blonde (incls. DVD details)

Fri, 18 Jan 2002 05:05:18 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - Two of last summer's comedies, Legally Blonde and America's Sweethearts, move their competition to the video store. Neither film has a high-concept that's fruitful--they're both pitches without a paddle buoyed only by the presence of famous...

'Ears to the Dumbo DVD

Fri, 2 Nov 2001 18:53:19 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - With Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio, Walt Disney had established two story prototypes between which he would all but alternate for subsequent animated features. In 1937's Snow White, the titular heroine trusts that...

Tales from the "Darko" Side

Fri, 2 Nov 2001 18:48:21 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - I am the same age as Donnie Darko writer-director Richard Kelly (26), so his memories of the 1980s are temporally synchronized with mine. The film's titular hero is a little older than Kelly was in 1988, the year in which the tragicomic Donnie...

"Down from the Mountain" and "Startup.com"

Thu, 25 Oct 2001 17:22:58 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - With the advent (moreover, industry-wide acceptance) of digital video, married partners in documentary-making Chris Hegedus and D A Pennebaker are more prolific than ever before. Artisan just released their last two projects, Down from the...

On "The Grinch": the film, the competing DVDs, the playset

Sat, 20 Oct 2001 17:43:00 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas? More like Dr. Strangelove's. The Ron Howard film version of the perennial children's favourite has horror movie limbs that spring up independently of Seussian intent, the most extended of them going by...

Take a Bite Out of Film History

Thu, 18 Oct 2001 07:09:30 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - "The Jaws Log" is not, in fact, laid out in the manner of a sea captain's journal, though it does offer a blow-by-blow account from private quarters of a voyage fraught with peril. Written by Carl Gottlieb, who was given a role in Jaws, piped up...

Van Damme was duplicated, but the script got jammed in the copier

Tue, 16 Oct 2001 19:17:40 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - Replicant is the best movie to feature Jean Claude Van Damme in a dual role as identical twins--that there's actually a choice in the matter is preposterous. It transcends both Double Impact and Maximum Risk (from the same director...

Murphy's Law of Nature

Mon, 15 Oct 2001 05:17:53 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - There comes a day when you can no longer revile a bad movie with any urgency, because another one's going to come along regardless, sure as the sun sets. So it goes with Dr. Dolittle 2, a sequel to a movie I've never seen that is in and of itself...

Ginger Snaps: the film, the (Canadian-exclusive) DVD

Tue, 9 Oct 2001 08:16:34 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - Ginger Snaps is so eager to let you know that it's a metaphor, like a kid with a secret, that the text upon its subtext becomes transparent--and when you can see through a film, it's not as much fun. About a month ago I watched John Landis' An...

I don't "Recall" this "Terminator"

Fri, 5 Oct 2001 21:32:30 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - Despite the postponement of his latest theatrical release, the vigilante-fireman thriller Collateral Damage, I think Arnold Schwarzenegger could still experience a career renaissance in this post-September eleventh landscape. They say the public's...

It really is "an offer you can't refuse."

Fri, 5 Oct 2001 21:23:50 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - Men love The Godfather; boys love Star Wars. Some guys claim to hold the two franchises in equal regard, but if he knows more of Darth Vader's dialogue by heart than Vito Corleone's, ladies, find a new mate, or compete against Lego for his...

Someone Wicked This Way Comes

Mon, 24 Sep 2001 17:56:41 GMT

rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - By the time I was a grade-schooler, "wicked" had become a synonym for "cool," "awesome," that sort of thing. The new straight-to-video release Wicked could warp the meaning of the word again; if the film is popular with kids, which is not out of...

Halloween, Too (Universal DVD re-release)

Wed, 5 Sep 2001 04:31:09 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - Halloween II picks up exactly where Halloween left off, though a seam would show if you pasted the two films together, and that seam goes by the name of Rick Rosenthal. Director John Carpenter's handpicked replacement (Carpenter came on...

Look for this Collector's DVD in the Lunar Bin

Mon, 3 Sep 2001 17:02:16 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - Its meter is never off, yet An American Werewolf in London's rhythms are unconventional. It's an unguessable button-pusher, the rarest kind. Writer-director John Landis channelled Luis Buñuel for a series of enveloping dream sequences that...

Holy Classic!

Sat, 25 Aug 2001 18:45:19 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - The 1966 Batman feature sprays some Bat Critic Repellent in its opening credits sequence by dedicating what follows to those who know how to have a good time, but believe me, it's not out of embarrassed obligation that I recommend the film, one of the...

Getting Dumped/Garbage Dump

Sat, 25 Aug 2001 18:37:47 GMT

rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - One not-so-magic Christmas, I gave a girl on whom I had a crush a box of Frosted Flakes. I had attached a lovey-dovey card that looked more suited to a wedding present and spent hours prettifying Tony the Tiger with tissue paper and ribbons. The girl's...

Extra-ordinary

Wed, 15 Aug 2001 06:34:25 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - It's not a fashionable thing to say, but here goes: I don't mind that Robert Redford's Ordinary People beat out Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull for Best Picture at the 1981 Academy Awards. I was irate when Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves trumped...

No Magazines, No Detergent, Just HK Splendor

Wed, 8 Aug 2001 04:10:30 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - Director Tsui Hark stands apart from his Chinese contemporaries by committing to a tone and relative congruity. Having made a couple of English-language pictures starring a Belgian (the Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicles Double Team and Knock-Off) and been...

The Josie with the Mostie

Tue, 31 Jul 2001 17:15:28 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - I have this sinking feeling that the adolescent demographic--the studio's target audience, not filmmakers Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont's--resent Josie and the Pussycats because it portrays them as sheep, but the film gives young adults far more credit...

City on Fire in Another Dimension

Mon, 30 Jul 2001 15:23:54 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - Improved upon in Reservoir Dogs, its unofficial American remake, the 1987 Hong Kong action-thriller City on Fire nonetheless suffers in an Americanized form: dubbed and revised dialogue does not Reservoir Dogs make it, and the few nods to western pop...

"Bully" Pulpit

Fri, 27 Jul 2001 08:03:34 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author bill_chambers - An authority figure speaks the defining line of dialogue in Bully, Larry Clark's quasi-sequel to his own hotly contested Kids: "I don't know what you're up to. I don't think I want to know." Often accused, even with only three motion pictures under his...