While this movie has some interesting things to say about how our personal histories can disappear and be replaced by the stories we tell, it loses steam beyond that. Too bad, it has some fun moments, but you have to sit through a lot of predictable scenes to enjoy them.

I didn’t plan it, but this movie provides a pretty amazing contrast to The Last Samurai. Here we also have Americans living in the midst of Japanese culture, but in modern-day Tokyo. It’s a pretty stunning comparison. I get the feeling that Sophia Coppola represents a unique phenomenon in Hollywood because her father’s name, connections,…

I was first facinated by samurai culture as a kid when the SHOGUN miniseries came out on TV. This movie attempts to convey some of the same things, and it does so in a few ways. Most of the time, though, just when I was getting curious about some facet of the main character’s environment,…

It’s great to see a Chinese Kung Fu Comedy poke fun at western sports and movies as well as their own beloved Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Chow Yun Fat flicks. Like Mortal Kombat, computer graphics are used instead of wires to create impossible kung fu action, but all in the context of soccer. They…

What a good documentary. Because it’s so unpretentious and unpreachy, even the arguments presented that I disagree with (for lawsuits against fast food companies) are not offensive or a turnoff. It addresses a genuine curiosity: what would happen to you if you ate nothing but McDonald’s food? That curiosity is satisfied with shocks and laughs…

A dwarf inherits a small, remote station house and loses his job when his boss dies. With nowhere else to go, he moves into it. That’s about all there is to the story, but somehow this movie manages to find charm and depth in otherwise ordinary people and situations. It’s like spending an afternoon in…

A holocaust movie that chronicles the survival of a concert pianist. It’s another one of those movies that makes you appreciate how good we have it. I think watching too many of this kind of movie too close together puts one at risk of depression instead of appreciation, though. This was a little soon after…

This movie pays homage to a long list of Sci-Fi predecessors, but I think I would put Fritz Lang’s 1927 classic Metropolis at the top. Live-action actors play in a computer-generated set that is stylized to the hilt. The story is very comic book-esque – a fantasy that is pretty campy but entertaining. I think…

A harsh look at the brutal life of children in the City of God, the slums outside of Rio De Janero. This is one of those movies, like the The Killing Fields, that explores the role of journalism in showing us truths that we would rather ignore. It too is based on a true story.…