Archive for Gopal

Eastern Promises (2007) Movie Review

Given that “Eastern Promises” is a David Cronenberg film, one shouldn’t be entirely surprised that it opens with a vicious throat slashing and a fourteen year old girl hemorrhaging in a drug store. The girl in question dies soon after while giving birth to a baby girl under the care of midwife Anna (Naomi [...]

September 16th, 2007 | Gopal | 0 comments | Read More

3:10 to Yuma (2007) Movie Review

From the outset, director James Mangold’s (”Walk the Line”) latest film, “3:10 to Yuma,” has two strikes against it: it is a Western, a genre that has been dying a slow death over the past 25 years, and it is a remake. That it succeeds is a testament to the performances of the two [...]

September 16th, 2007 | Gopal | 0 comments | Read More

Live Free or Die Hard (2007) Movie Review

The original “Die Hard” was a blast of superheated fresh air when it descended upon unprepared moviegoers in the summer of 1988. That film introduced us to wisecracking, gun-toting southpaw NYPD Detective John McClane, who has become an American institution. It not only established TV heartthrob Bruce Willis as a major action star, but more [...]

July 1st, 2007 | Gopal | 0 comments | Read More

The Night of the Sunflowers (2006) Movie Review

One of the residents of a declining little village in northern Spain comes across an ancient cave in the nearby hills. Hoping to revitalize the town through the potential touristic possibilities of a prehistoric cave, the locals call upon Speleologist Esteban (Carmello Gomez), who arrives in the region to investigate the cave with his assistant [...]

July 1st, 2007 | Gopal | 0 comments | Read More

Grindhouse (2007) Movie Review

The Grindhouse was a sub-genre of exploitation films that were generally deemed too extreme and cheap for the mainstream, and there wasn’t much genre segregation with regards to what got heaped into this pile. The only qualifications were that it had to be strange, violent and of poor quality. Everything from Herschell Gordon Lewis’ ‘pioneering’ [...]

April 6th, 2007 | Gopal | 0 comments | Read More

300 (2007) Movie Review

In a blurb I wrote in my ‘Best of 2005′ list, I declared “A Bittersweet Life” to be “one of the slickest pieces of stone-cold machismo to slide across the silver screen since ‘Scarface.”‘ Well, I think we have a strong challenger for that title in Zach Snyder’s “300.” The latest film adaptation of a [...]

March 10th, 2007 | Gopal | 3 comments | Read More

Black Snake Moan (2006) Movie Review

“God put you in my path, and I aim to cure you of your wickedness.” There are only a handful of actors who can utter that phrase and make us believe it, and Samuel L. Jackson is on the top of that list. In “Black Snake Moan,” the latest offering from “Hustle and Flow” director [...]

March 2nd, 2007 | Gopal | 0 comments | Read More

Gopal’s Top 10 Movies of 2006

After several outstanding films rolled out of 2005, 2006 has been a bit of a downer. With a few notable exceptions, I didn’t come across any films that really stood out as exceptional. There were certainly some good and entertaining movies, but even they were of the deeply flawed variety. Still, thinking back through the [...]

January 6th, 2007 | Gopal | 0 comments | Read More

Children of Men (2006) Movie Review

“Children Of Men,” the latest film from rising Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron (”Y tu mama tambi’n”), asks a very curious question: What would the world be like if we could no longer have children? Pretty crappy, it seems. The film takes place in London in the year 2027, 18 years after the last child on [...]

December 21st, 2006 | Gopal | 0 comments | Read More

Apocalypto (2006) Movie Review

Over the past couple of years, few people in Hollywood have gotten as much negative press as Mel Gibson. And not just Britney Spears showing her hoo-ha type press, but true vitriol. Granted, Gibson’s drunken Jews and Sugartits rant didn’t do his public image any good, but nevertheless, it has reached a point where the [...]

December 11th, 2006 | Gopal | 0 comments | Read More

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) Movie Review

The 1930s were a terrible time in Spain. Mired in a vicious civil war that saw both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia use Spain as a practice ground for WWII, the country descended into Fascist repression under Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Against this incendiary backdrop, we have Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth,” a visually [...]

December 7th, 2006 | Gopal | 0 comments | Read More

Karas: The Prophecy (2006) Movie Review

“Karas: The Prophecy” is, bar none, the most visually spectacular animated feature I have ever seen. It is also the most idiotic, poorly constructed, convoluted, and pointless film I have ever seen. It is a triumph of technical skill, meticulous attention to detail and computing horsepower; and the melding of CGI and hand drawn animation [...]

December 5th, 2006 | Gopal | 2 comments | Read More