Back to the Future: A film review

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - As a child, I was interested in the concept of time travel, yet for whatever reason, I never found the film Back to the Future particularly engaging or interesting. I think it may have had something to do with it not living up to my fantasies of what I would do with time travel, as well as the fact that in the film, they do not go that far back in time, so it left my imagination demanding more. Despite my previous prejudice towards the film, to say that the film enjoys cult status is putting it lightly. Back to the Future retains a special place in the minds of my generation as far as what the movies were meant to be. A special nostalgia surrounds the film, and quite honestly, I wasn't all that much in favour of the adoration that people had for it. Nevertheless, I had the opportunity to re-watch the film, so I decided to try to give it a fresh review.

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The Adventures of Tintin: A film review

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - Back in 1981, Steven Spielberg made a film called Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was a huge success. Someone told him that the movie reminded them of The Adventures of Tintin, a popular French comic series. Spielberg hadn't heard of it, but looked into it and started reading them. They really captured his imagination and one day he hoped to make a Tintin movie himself. Of course, sometimes it takes a long time for a dream to come to fruition, even if you're one of the biggest directors in the world. Though, sometimes it seems that the wait is well worth it. This is one of those cases.

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War Horse: A film review

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - To start off, I must confess that movies about horses generally have the terrible disposition of being terrible, overly sappy and sentimental, since often the horse is given human attributes, albeit silent ones. Thus it must come as no surprise that when I first heard that Steven Spielberg was choosing to come back to the director's chair to make a movie about a horse, I felt reasonably concerned. Upon the premier of the second promotional trailer for this film, however, my fears were relieved by the realization that this was not simply going to be another dumb movie about a horse, but something more than I had imagined.

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Super 8: A film review

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - Lately I've taken to keeping myself in the dark when it comes to movies. Back when I worked at a movie theatre, consistent exposure to theatrical trailers was inevitable as it was often just part of the job to assure quality of picture before the feature started. I caught the teaser trailer to Super 8 a long while ago. I suppose they wanted to hype up the film fairly early on. After that, I didn't pursue it any further. I like J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg so I figured the movie was a safe bet. In fact, I think it was Steven Spielberg who said that if he had his way, an audience would watch his movies knowing nothing about them but the title. Maybe that

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The Pacific: An HBO mini-series review

- Burnaby, British Columbia - In the wake of the glorious success of HBO's Band of Brothers, which covered the experiences of Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army across the European theatre of war, calls for a similar examination of the Pacific theatre of war. When watching The Pacific, it is nearly impossible to not at least try to compare and contract it from its predecessor and that's not merely because Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg were the executive producers (plus Gary Goetzman). The Pacific instead follows three eager, enlisted Marines through their travails across the Pacific Ocean against the Imperial Japanese Army.

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