I, Robot
December 7, 2004
One mistake was all it took for Big Willie to lose his crown as king of the summer blockbuster. Now I, Robot is his rise from the ashes of Wild Wild West. The script is near perfect. The special effects are near perfect. The direction is near perfect....
Hidalgo
November 28, 2004
Filmmaker Joe Johnston is something of a curious anomaly in Hollywood. He got his start as a protégé of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas and adopted their style of filmmaking once he became a director. He has since made retro adventure films his forte...
Kill Bill, Volume 2
November 27, 2004
Quentin Tarantino concludes his epic ode to exploitation films with Kill Bill, Volume 2 (2004) and shifts gears visually and thematically. If Volume 1 was a homage to Asian cinema—specifically, martial arts and samurai films—then Volume 2 pays tribute...
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Extended Edition
July 4, 2004
As with The Fellowship of the Ring before it, this extended cut of The Two Towers brings us some welcome new scenes to the most epic story ever told. This isn’t so much a director’s cut as it is a simple re-intergration of segments that were...
Welcome to the Jungle
June 17, 2004
When a film changes titles from its production, to its release, you don’t think too much about it. Working titles are common, it happens. However, when a film changes title from its American release to its UK release, that’s a bad sign. It means the...
The Bourne Identity (Special Edition)
June 6, 2004
We open with a common hook, someone who has lost their memory and doesn’t know who they are. This time it’s Matt Damon as Jason Bourne. He is found floating unconscious in the rough Mediterranean Sea, when picked up by a boat and nursed back to health...
Hellboy
March 27, 2004
The success of X-Men (2000) and Spider-Man (2002) has opened the door for a new wave a comic book adaptations. In the past, studios have played it safe and only green-lighted adaptations of mainstream comic books with large followings. However, this has...
Starsky & Hutch
March 11, 2004
Let’s be honest, most cinematic remakes of classic TV shows are awful. They either barely resemble the original (like the Claire Danes version of The Mod Squad) or turn it into kitsch parody (like The Flintstones). More often than not the contemporary...
Enter the Dragon: Special Edition
February 17, 2004
When Enter the Dragon came out in 1973, it established Bruce Lee as a box office star in the United States. He was already a sensation in the rest of the world, but it was this U.S./Chinese co-production that transformed him into a pop culture phenomenon....
Rex Steele: Nazi Smasher
February 5, 2004
Based on the independent comic book of the same name, Rex Steele: Nazi Smasher (2004) is a fun, highly entertaining animated short film by a group of students from New York University. It is a loving homage to those old pulp serials (like Doc Savage)...
