As the web designer uploads reviews I’ve written from years past, they’ll be listed as “New Posts.” So to access the pertinent, current, actually interesting articles, just click on the 2008 category on the right side of the page. We apologize for our oddity.

Sam

As usual, the ring of the New Year also has the ring of bad film (or maybe the stench). One such film is the brutally boring White Noise. Posing as a horror film, White Noise is really just another desperate attempt by distribution studios to milk the genre for as much as its worth.

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The Wedding Date, to be fair, is on par with the worst soap opera airing on television today. And that’s being fair. But it doesn’t start off that way. Well, in terms of quality it does, but in terms of subject matter, The Wedding Date begins as a lighthearted comedy. But by the end of the film, affairs and love triangles are abound, boring us to tears with lengthy speeches and predictable twists. This is the sort of formula film we all hate.

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The Weather Man is one of the few films of 2005 that has truly blown me off my feet. It’s simply pitch perfect. Director Gore Verbinski has created a film that bridges the two genres of coming-of-age and middle-aged crisis together into a somehow cohesive portrait of a truly forlorn and troubled man.

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War of the Worlds is simply the finest disaster film made since King Kong was released in 1933. But it’s more than a type-genre disaster movie; it’s a film about survival, humanity, and family. Spielberg wraps his arms around this gargantuan project and whittles it down to something of a unique character sketch. Because War of the Worlds isn’t about mankind falling to the aliens; it’s about a family caught in the malevolent chaos of an international war. We never know more than Ray, Robbie, and Rachel do. We follow them through every bone-wrenching event with a never-broken point-of-view that immerses us further into Steven Spielberg’s world than we ever imagined possible.

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To be honest, I’ve never been a fan of Johnny Cash’s music. I listened to it every now and then when flipping through the presets in my car, stopping to sing along to the few lyrics I knew, but I never gave the musician much thought. Until now. For me, Walk the Line is everything Ray was not. Ray was plagued by an uneven screenplay, but got enough sentimentality and acting points for people to look past its flaws, and managed to nab a Best Picture nomination. Walk the Line, however, is worth all the press it’s likely to get. With acting work just as impressive as Ray’s, music just as affecting, and a screenplay that hits all the right chords, Walk the Line is a fine, fair biopic for Mr. Cash.

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