The Hobbit Reviewed by John David Ebert I saw this movie in IMAX 3D, and while watching it realized that the drive-in movie hasn’t disappeared at all, it has actually been placed inside of the movie theater auditorium and crossed with the stadium-style seating of the old dramatic theater houses. But instead of being gathered […]
Archives for 2012
On The Walking Dead
The Walking Dead Reviewed by John David Ebert As I have pointed out elsewhere, television is now the great new medium that is taking over the role once occupied by cinema, especially the role of miniaturizing ancient and long forgotten cosmologies. And so, from now on, I will be including reviews of television shows on […]
The Evolving American Myth, Part 2: Clint Eastwood
In my discussion of The Chronicles of Riddick on this site (which I have retitled The Evolving American Myth, Part 1: The Chronicles of Riddick), I refer to the story of Percival, one of the Arthurian Romances, and to the vision of an inner moral sense in each individual. I trace this inner moral sense […]
Babette’s Feast: revisited
by John Lobell As we await Cloud Atlas, let’s look at a more modest spiritual movie from the past, Babette’s Feast, a 1987 Danish movie directed by Gabriel Axel, staring Stéphane Audran as Babette, and based on a story by Isak Dinesen. Babette’s Feast looks at the dual nature of out existence. In the […]
Midnight in Paris
by John Lobell Have you noticed that quite a few recent movies use non-linear layered time? In 50 First Dates, a man romantically pursues a woman who has suffered a brain injury affecting her long-term memory. Each night she loses all of the memories of the day, and wakes up the next morning thinking it […]
Groundhog Day, revisited
Groundhog Day is one of those movies that I will watch any time I come across it on TV. I have been thinking about why. Groundhog Day is a 1993 romantic comedy directed by Harold Ramis and staring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. It was well received on release, but as is often the case […]
The Evolving American Myth, Part 1: The Chronicles of Riddick
by John Lobell The Chronicles of Riddick, directed in 2004 by David Twohy and staring Vin Diesel, has always been a favorite of mine. It had a poor critical reception and its gross did not make back its production, marketing, and distribution costs. However it has since seen success on DVD and television broadcasts. […]
More thoughts on Prometheus
by John Lobell An expedition goes to a remote planet where there was an outpost of beings from another world called the Engineers. The members of the expedition piece together that the Engineers had created life on earth, and that those on this outpost had created a vicious bio-weapon (the aliens of the Alien movies) […]
On The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games Reviewed by John Lobell First, this is a discussion of the movie; I have not read the books. Second, I am going to exercise some laziness and, for those not familiar with the story line, quote from Wikipedia to get us up to speed: “The story takes place in a dystopian post-apocalyptic […]