Blogcritics Category: Video: Adventure

DVD Review: Battlestar Galactica - Season 4.0

Blake Matthews — Thu, 8 Jan 2009 16:05:25 EST

Battlestar Galactica - Season 4.0 is the first half of the popular sci-fi channels hit series final season.
Sci-Fi Channel’s Battlestar Galactica has become a phenomenon. It's a re-imagining of the 1970’s science-fiction series of the same name, and this new version is enjoying a far greater success than its predecessor. While the original series only lasted one season, Sci-Fi will premiere the second half of the show’s fourth and...

Movie Review: Australia

Todd Ford — Wed, 7 Jan 2009 18:23:09 EST

His playful obsessions linger on, such as huge camera gestures, melodrama, loving homage to Hollywood movies, and lots of music.
Australia is not a great romantic epic, but it is a good popcorn romantic epic. It isn’t a big, serious attempt to make us laugh and cry while changing the world – and sweeping the Oscars. It is a light and frivolous and silly big movie that does make us laugh and cry and then sends us out to face the world it has helped us forget...

Movie Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Todd Ford — Tue, 6 Jan 2009 16:13:26 EST

His tragedy is watching those he loves age normally, without him.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a movie about chance. It is about the incidents that shape a life. It is about the incidents that almost shape a life. It is about how timing determines which is which. And it is about all of these, brilliantly.Button uses indelible period detail, burnished and polished, to tell the tale of Benjamin, a...

Movie Review: Quantum of Solace

Todd Ford — Tue, 6 Jan 2009 14:28:00 EST

I remember when James Bond movies were fun.
I remember when James Bond movies were fun. I’d have a regular date with my sister to get our latest fix of campy humor and cool gadgets and gorgeous women with humorously suggestive names. Of late, we don’t get to continue that tradition -- my sister and I now live more than a thousand miles apart. We do agree though that the Bond fun...

Movie Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Chris Beaumont — Mon, 5 Jan 2009 20:23:34 EST

Poetic, beautiful, and requires multiple viewings.
In 1921, F. Scott Fitzgerald published a short story called "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." It was a tale of a child born with the body of an old man. As the child grew up his body grew younger. In the story, Benjamin's father forced his young, er, old son to disguise himself, so as to appear younger and help avoid...

Movie Review: Ponyo on the Cliff

moviejohn — Mon, 5 Jan 2009 14:16:55 EST

With his latest film, the master animator Hayao Miyazaki immerses himself completely into the mind of a five-year-old.
It is often said that older people start to return to a more youthful, childlike state and so it is for 67-year-old master animator, Hayao Miyazaki with his latest film, Ponyo on the Cliff. After making numerous movies that have presented a more mature depth in presenting childhood as in My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away, this time he immerses...

Sci-Fi Channel Premiere Review: 100 Million B.C.

Matt Paprocki — Mon, 5 Jan 2009 13:33:33 EST

Maybe a time machine could be invented to send this movie back to 100 Million B.C.?
Ah yes, a movie by The Asylum. They tend to be cheap as hell, loaded with dollar store quality special effects, and have a nonsensical plot even the writer couldn't understand… all those traits and more are present in 100 Million B.C. Roger Corman wishes he could have made a movie this terrible back in the ‘50s. The basics: the...

Movie Review: Bedtime Stories

Chris Beaumont — Mon, 5 Jan 2009 13:17:55 EST

Pleasant experience. Not terribly memorable, but enjoyable while it unfolded.
As Adam Sandler moves into his forties, it's becoming just a bit more difficult for him to continue playing the man-child characters that aided him in his rise to fame from Saturday Night Live through his film output in the 1990s. It appears that the days of Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, and The Water Boy are behind him. Since the year 2000...

DVD Review: Hunter x Hunter - Volume One

Bill Sherman — Mon, 5 Jan 2009 02:32:46 EST

The first fifteen episodes of the anime action fantasy get a boxed set release.
To begin with the "x" in Hunter x Hunter does not appear to be spoken aloud -- as either "ex" or as "times," which is how I first read it. But from the way, the voice artist playing Gon reads each "x"-strewn chapter ("Encounter x Hesitation x Departure," for instance) on the first boxed set of...

Movie Nuggets: Hancock, Wanted, Daredevil, Elektra

Mark Buckingham — Sat, 3 Jan 2009 22:42:49 EST

When you just don't have time for all the details -- superhero edition.
For those who just want to know, "Should I see this or not?" without all the fluff and intellectualism (or at least minimal amounts), I present to you these bite-sized movie reviews. If you're in an abnormally large hurry, skip to the last few words of each section, as each is noted with "See it" or "Pass." So...