Martin Campbell is an interesting case, because he makes great Bond movies—"Casino Royale" is one of my top ten films of the decade—and can't seem to do anything else right. (See: "Edge of Darkness." Or, better yet, don't.)

Apparently the international title is "The Kung Fu Kid" in all other countries. So it's only Americans who are idiots.

It was Marc Forster. A good example, at least in this case, of a director rising far above his level of competence.

I haven't read the books, but I'm pretty sure that the second and third movies have only the titles in common.

If you want to see badly edited, incoherent, shaky action footage, check out the opening car chase in Quantum of Solace. Watching it for the first time, I knew that I was in for a long, unwatchable slog. I'm not necessarily a fan of shaky-cam style either, but inferior versions make you appreciate how good Greengrass…

Each passing Lohan
I don't know why, but the first sentence of this post made me laugh pretty hard. Nice work, O'Neal.

@Lone: Agreed on the X-Files ep. I'm also annoyed by the fact that his character used a manual typewriter, like all TV or movie novelists. (And has there ever been a fictional character's novel that sounded like it might be at all worth reading?)

I'll torture you so slowly you'll think it's a career.

"I'm tired of running away! Did Braveheart run away? Did Payback run away?"

Roger Ebert argues that "Congo" was really a misunderstood comedy, a sly put-on of the entire adventure genre. His argument was interesting enough that I decided to check the movie out again, and still found it completely forgettable.

If Kubrick had lived, I think it's quite likely that he would have cut twenty minutes out of Eyes Wide Shut before its premiere—which, after all, is exactly what he did with 2001 and The Shining.

Kubrick's ambition is the one quality that I think more filmmakers could stand to imitate. His methods, not so much, at least not for ordinary mortals.

Don't get me wrong: I love Kubrick, and think he's one of the greatest directors of all time (second, in my book, only to Powell and Pressburger). But as a role model for other directors, he's very dangerous. Kubrick gets away with insane perfectionism and hundreds of takes because he's, well, Kubrick, and he's earned…

I love Happy Together, which for me completes the trilogy of Wong's truly great movies, preceded by Chungking Express and Fallen Angels. His later stuff is amazing, too, but it's remarkable how quickly he fell down the Kubrickian rabbit hole of obsessive visual perfection, after the freshness and spontaneity of the…

Increasingly implausible demon magic
I have to say, I love Jane Lynch, but I'm getting bored of Sue as a cartoonish supervillain. Her delivery and timing is still impeccable, but at this point, her hatred of Will is becoming repetitive and a little tiresome. There has to be a way for her to remain an interesting…

I rented Vampires soon after buying my first DVD player, so it was the first director's commentary track that I'd ever heard. I can't remember much about what Carpenter said, aside from some highly complimentary remarks about Sheryl Lee's ass.

I was surprisingly underwhelmed by House of the Devil. I give it credit for trying to create an atmosphere of dread, but here's the thing: if a movie spends forty minutes building tension in an empty house, the payoff ought to be 1) great, and 2) organically related to the buildup itself. It's fine if you want to show…

You might want to check out Paul Schrader's remake of Cat People, too. It's a weird movie, but scary and effective. Plus it has nude Nastassja Kinski, circa 1982, and a killer title song. (When I heard it used again in Inglourious Basterds, I almost levitated out of my seat with gratitude.)

"Splice" got a CinemaScore rating of D, which is an inadvertent stamp of approval: a rating in the D range usually implies that a movie is weird, at least somewhat challenging, and doesn't conform easily to its advertised genre. CinemaScore audiences don't mind bad movies; they just don't like being caught off guard,…

In the abstract, the idea of an X-Files movie that is basically an extended MOTW is perfectly sound—or even better than sound, since it could theoretically lead to a new series of movies that could run for years. But the script and execution of the movie we got was surprisingly lackluster, especially given the fact…