Adam Selvidge's Website Blog
Bolt: Directed by Byron Howard, Chris Williams. With John Travolta, Miley Cyrus, Susie Essman, Mark Walton. The canine star of a fictional sci-fi/action show that believes his powers are real embarks on a cross country trek to save his co-star from a threat he believes is just as real. I ran into a discussion about this film on reddit with a post about how this movie went from being a concept called “American Dog” to the eventual movie that it became. They mentioned someone was claiming this was one of the best Disney films released in 2008, which I found...
A Beautiful Mind: Directed by Ron Howard. With Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer. After John Nash, a brilliant but asocial mathematician, accepts secret work in cryptography, his life takes a turn for the nightmarish. I was surprised to recognize Anthony Rapp as one of the college fellows at the beginning of the film. He’s obviously much more known for his time on Star Trek than A Beautiful Mind, but it’s nice to see he’s been around doing his thing for a while longer than I realized. The movie still holds up just fine, but it was funny...
“Based on Star Trek: the Next Generation created by Gene Roddenberry. X-Men based on the Marvel comic book.” There’s a pretty good comic book that precedes this book and I had a pretty good time reading that, so I figured I’d give this book a try, as it was only $0.99 at the time. This is not a good book though. I’m not going to lay that at Michael Jan Friedman’s feet though, because this feels like there was a definitive decision to aim the book at a much younger audience, something in the 10-12 year old range, which is...
The School for Good and Evil: Directed by Paul Feig. With Kit Young, Sophia Anne Caruso, Cate Blanchett, Liam Woon. Best friends Sophie and Agatha find themselves on opposing sides of an epic battle when they’re swept away into an enchanted school where aspiring heroes and villains are trained to protect the balance between Good and Evil. I’m not sure how I missed it, but this isn’t a fairy tale story, it’s a story about fairy tale stories, and the titular school is to train the future fairy tales of the world. As a Netflix film, it’s done well enough...
Clerks III: Directed by Kevin Smith. With Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Vincent Pereira, Mike Zapcic. Dante, Elias, and Jay and Silent Bob are enlisted by Randal after a heart attack to make a movie about the convenience store that started it all. I’m a fan of Kevin Smith’s work and how he can captivate an audience with some of the most entertainingly weird stories during his Q&As sessions. Clerks 3 is much less of a work of a creative mind than it is the work of a man that nearly died from a massive heart attack and had to change...
Vesper: Directed by Kristina Buozyte, Bruno Samper. With Raffiella Chapman, Eddie Marsan, Rosy McEwen, Richard Brake. Struggling to survive with her father after the collapse of Earth’s ecosystem, 13-year-old Vesper must use her wits, strength and bio-hacking abilities to fight for the future. A perfectly weird film with a weird plot and weird scene. The culmination of all that weirdness is a movie that works for me, if only just barely. Buy On Amazon!
Jake Cardigan’s quest to piece together his fractured life is interrupted when it’s discovered that a new, deadlier strain of Tek called ‘grease’ is infecting r This is a much different adaptation than the Marvel Comics version that came out a long while before this one. This has more violence, more sexual content, and more post apocalyptic feel to it than the more hopeful and sanitized Marvel version. It’s not necessarily done for the better, as the plot gets buried under the weight of trying to be edgy, but it works for the most part. I picked up all but...
Doom: Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak. With Dwayne Johnson, Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike, Deobia Oparei. Space Marines are sent to investigate strange events at a research facility on Mars but find themselves at the mercy of genetically enhanced killing machines. I received this as a reward for spending money with Universal and I was blessed with the “unrated” version. I can’t tell what’s different about it from the regular version and I’m definitely not going to watch the other version and try to compare them. It’s still a goofy movie that takes itself slightly too seriously and the first person shooter...
Signs: Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. With Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, Abigail Breslin. A widowed former reverend living with his children and brother on a Pennsylvania farm finds mysterious crop circles in their fields, which suggests something more frightening to come. I was reminded that I own this on HD-DVD when I found it in a box in my closet during a clean out day and I fondly remember being freaked out by it, so when I saw it on itunes for just $5, I snagged a copy. It’s still a great film about family and choices and...
Captain America II: Death Too Soon: Directed by Ivan Nagy. With Reb Brown, Connie Sellecca, Len Birman, Christopher Lee. The star spangled hero must battle a villain’s plan to poison America with a chemical that horrifically accelerates the aging process. The second of two films, there’s a bit of re-used stuff at the beginning that had me worried for a moment, but after that first section, it’s all uniquely shot material. You’ll be happy to hear that the van that was destroyed in evil’s attempt to kill Captain America in the first film has been fully restored and Steve is...
