Author: Marc Sanders

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE (2005)

By Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Mike Newell
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Ralph Fiennes, Brendan Gleeson
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 88% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A young wizard (Radcliffe) finds himself competing in a hazardous tournament between rival schools of magic, but he is distracted by recurring nightmares.


[DISCLAIMER: This review will more than likely contain spoilers, as well as Potterhead references galore.  I apologize in advance.]

When I first saw this movie, I grieved over how much of the enormously entertaining book had been sacrificed on the altar of box office viability.  Why not make two films out of it?  (Which they did later on with the final book, of course.)  What happened to Winky?  What on earth is going on with the tournament scoring?  (Seriously, try to keep track of it…it makes no sense in the film.)  Where’s the subplot about how Rita Skeeter obtains her inside information?

Watching it again years later, for perhaps the 6th or 7th time, I think I’m a little mellower.  Comparing a movie to its source material is a fool’s errand.  There’s a great story about how, years ago, someone complained to Raymond Chandler how Hollywood had ruined his book, The Big Sleep.  Chandler calmly pointed to a bookshelf, and said, “Well, there’s my book right there.  Hollywood didn’t ruin it.  It still exists.”  (I’m paraphrasing, to be sure.)

So.  Movies and books, apples and oranges.  To quote Carl Weathers in Predator: “It comes with the job.  I can accept it.”

Having said all that, I think the best way to give my impression of the film of H.P.a.t.G.o.F. is to list what it gets right and what it gets wrong.

RIGHT: The second task, involving hidden treasures in the Black Lake.  I loved the look of the mermen and mermaids and the hinkypunks.  This scene managed to captured almost exactly what I saw in my head when I read the book.

WRONG: The first task, involving retrieving a golden egg.  We see FAR too little of how the other contestants fared in their attempts, jumping right past the first three just to see what Harry does.

RIGHT: “Mad-Eye” Moody.  I’ll never be able to read the books again without seeing Brendan Gleeson’s magnificent performance in my head.  That amazing enchanted eye, the facial tics, the glee with which he transforms a student into a ferret…it’s perfect.

WRONG: The Yule Ball.  As it appears in the film, it literally brings the movie to a halt.  It’s all about the interpersonal relationships between Ron, Hermione, and Harry, but nothing happens to move the plot forward.  I can’t help thinking there was a better way to stage this pivotal event.

RIGHT: The events in the graveyard.  I can recall vividly the moment when I read the words, “He was dead” in the book.  I sat up on the sofa, my eyes grew wide, and I exclaimed out loud, “Holy s**t!”  The movie gets this entire sequence right.  As I recall, the graveyard covered two or three entire chapters in the book, and the film condenses it nicely into a 10-minute sequence.  (Approximately.)  It’s the moment, in both the books and the films, when the franchise became much more than “kid stuff.”

WRONG: Snape’s role in the film.  The movie curiously omits the incredibly relevant moment in the book when, after Dumbledore observes the Dark Mark on Snape’s arm, he tells him, “You know what to do.”  And Snape nods curtly and leaves the room.  That comes into play to a GREAT degree in the latter stages of the franchise.  Ah well.

And I’ll leave it there.  I could go on.  All in all, it’s a good film, a great spectacle, and a turning point for the series.  They could have called it, Harry Potter and the Advancement of Maturity.

QUICK TAKE: Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005)

By Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: George Clooney
Cast: David Strathairn, Patricia Clarkson, George Clooney, Jeff Daniels, Robert Downey Jr., Frank Langella
My Rating: 8/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 93% Certified Fresh

PLOT: In the early 1950s, broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow (Strathairn) looks to bring down Senator Joseph McCarthy.


I feel eminently unqualified to discuss the historical merits of Good Night, and Good Luck.  I am no history scholar.  What I know about the Hollywood blacklist and the HUAC hearings can be traced to sources such as movie reviews, the movies themselves, documentaries, and The Manchurian Candidate.  (The original, not the remake.)

As such, all I can report is that this movie is solidly well-made, photographed in gorgeous black and white, and is an immensely satisfying experience, because a bully gets what’s coming to him, on national television.  If there are times when it lags a little, well, civics lessons can’t be fireworks all the time.

David Strathairn is not quite a dead ringer for legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow, but he’s close enough, and he’s never less than convincing, especially when delivering Murrow’s broadcasts in that inimitable deadpan that somehow sounds more informed than the average reporter.

I especially enjoyed the segment where McCarthy appears on Murrow’s program to defend himself against charges made by Murrow on a previous show.  Shortly thereafter, Murrow goes over McCarthy’s rebuttal line by line, identifying each falsehood and inaccuracy.  That took guts back then, but Murrow stood for truth, as corny as that sounds, and he wasn’t about to let McCarthy’s lies slide.

All in all, Good Night, and Good Luck is a great film, maybe even an IMPORTANT film, because of our ever-shifting political climate.  You never know if another McCarthy will rise up, and you wonder if anyone will be around, like Murrow, to put them in their place.

[TRIVIA NOTE: look fast for Simon Helberg (Wolowitz on “The Big Bang Theory”) in what amounts to approximately five seconds total screen time.]

ZATHURA: A SPACE ADVENTURE (2005)

By Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Jon Favreau
Cast: Josh Hutcherson, Dax Shepard, Kristen Stewart, Tim Robbins
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 75% Certified Fresh

PLOT: Two young brothers (Hutcherson, Jonah Bobo) are drawn into an intergalactic adventure when their house is hurled through the depths of space by the magical board game they are playing.


If only all family movies were like this.

Too often, so-called family films are mealy-mouthed cream puffs that appeal to the short attention span of their target audience, leaving the parents either bored to tears or fatigued from sitting through 90 minutes of explosions.  The scripts are subpar and tend to treat kids as if they’re not all that bright.

Not Zathura.  With his third film (after the forgettable Made and the Christmas neo-classic Elf), director Jon Favreau proved that he’s the real deal.  Here’s a REAL family film with something for everybody: comedy, family drama, peril, thrills, a killer robot, fearsome aliens, and nostalgia.

The nostalgia part is especially notable.  The board game at the center of the film is constructed to look like something made in the ‘50s or ‘60s, which, to the kids in the film, is practically ancient history.  But for me, I found the film nostalgic in the way it captures the kind of fun I used to have at the movies.

Not that I don’t still have fun, mind you.  It’s just that, when I was a kid, sci-fi and fantasy films felt more real, you know?  It was so easy to imagine myself as a resident of the Goondocks, or discovering an alien in the cornfield behind my house, or building a spaceship in the backyard with my two best friends.  Zathura captures that kind of feeling like few other modern family films can.  It’s a movie that has the potential to live on in the imagination after countless other films have vacated your consciousness.

And the VISUALS.  I don’t know what kind of budget the movie had, but it looks like a $100 million movie.  The killer robot is absolutely convincing, as are the aliens.  Which brings up another great element of the film: danger.  The bad guys in this movie may occasionally look a little cartoony, but they are not to be trifled with.  That’s something a lot of kid’s movies tend to get wrong.  The filmmakers lose their nerve in creating real villains, for fear of pissing off too many parents.  In reality…dude, kids can handle it.  Give the bad guys fangs and spinning saw blades.  It just makes it that much more satisfying when the bad guys LOSE.

Zathura barely made its money back, and that’s including domestic AND worldwide grosses (okay, I looked it up).  I could be wrong, but I’ll bet too many people thought it was a Jumanji ripoff.  It IS based on a book by the same author as Jumanji (and The Polar Express, as it happens).  But it is possible, I think, to see Zathura in its own light.  It’s a fantastic movie that will please all ages.

QUICK TAKE: Jarhead (2005)

By Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper
My Rating: 10/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 61%

PLOT: A newly minted Marine sniper is sent to Iraq as part of Operation Desert Shield, only to find himself slowly losing his mind as he waits for a chance to make his first kill.


If Three Kings was the Gulf War version of Kelly’s Heroes, then Jarhead is the Gulf War Full Metal Jacket.  It’s a glorious paradox: a war film where it looks like the hero may never get to fire his weapon.

Jake Gyllenhaal is phenomenal in the lead role of Swofford, but Jamie Foxx steals every scene he’s in, as Staff Sergeant Sykes.

There’s beautiful imagery in the film, from the oil fires in the desert, to an arresting dream sequence where sand makes an appearance from a very surprising place.

I don’t know why, but I empathized a LOT with the Swofford role.  He learns how to use his sniper rifle with deadly force, he finally gets shipped out to where the fighting is…and air power nearly makes him obsolete.  What are they even doing there if airplanes can end the battle in minutes instead of hours?

There’s a great line when someone hears a helicopter flying overhead, blaring The Doors from loudspeakers.  A soldier looks up with exasperation: “That’s Vietnam music…can’t we get our own music?”  These guys wanted to fight, to carve their place into the history books with honor, and blood.  They wanted to distinguish themselves from their fathers or grandfathers who fought in other faraway countries.  The soldiers in the Gulf War of this movie wanted to “do it right.”

Jarhead offers searing insight disguised by a simple story.  It puts me into the head of a soldier who wants to do the right thing, the honorable thing – hell, ANYTHING – and who finds himself frustrated.  It struck me, and still does strike me, on a level I never expected.  I don’t know if I’ve clearly elaborated that with this review.  But there it is.

KISS KISS BANG BANG (2005)

By Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Shane Black
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 85% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A murder mystery brings together a private eye (Kilmer), a struggling actress (Monaghan), and a thief masquerading as an actor (Downey Jr.).


Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is so good, it’s a total freaking mystery how this same director, Shane Black, wrote and directed one of the worst movies I’ve seen in the past 20 years: 2018’s The Predator.  Just had to get that out of the way.

I envy you if you haven’t seen this movie yet, because one day it’ll be on Netflix or something, and your curiosity will get the better of you, and you’ll experience for the first time one of the great comedy mysteries ever written.  The dialogue flies faster than an episode of Gilmore Girls, so prick up your ears and stay on your toes, cause this train waits for no one.  The laughs are big and genuine.  The surprises are legion.  The mystery itself is a bit of a head-scratcher the first time around, so maybe watch it again, and you’ll get it.  Trust me…you’ll want to watch it again.

Downey Jr. and Kilmer exhibit the kind of unforced chemistry that deserves comparison to Newman and Redford.  If they decided to stage a two-person show consisting of nothing but the two of them interrupting each other, I’d pay to see it.  The actor in me gets a rush watching them play off each other, with Kilmer tossing off some of the great movie insults of all time.  Example:

Harry (Downey Jr.): “Do you think I’m stupid?”
Gay Perry (Kilmer): “I don’t think you’d know where to put food at, if you didn’t flap your mouth so much. Yes, I think you’re stupid.”

The screenplay is just one of the many delights of this movie.  It’s full of “meta” scenes and dialogue.  A scene occurs, and the movie pauses while the narration tells us, “That is a terrible scene.  Why was it in the movie?”  Or the movie is clicking along and suddenly it pauses again and the narrator tells us, “Oh, s**t, I skipped something!  That’s bad narrating.”  Brilliance.  To paraphrase Bugs Bunny, they do that kind of thing all through the picture.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang utterly flopped in 2005, grossing a paltry $4.2 million domestically, against a $15 million budget.  What the heck happened?  You’ve got charismatic leads (especially Downey Jr., who was, even then, starting to resemble the Tony Stark we know and love), a beautiful femme fatale (Michelle Monaghan, hubba HUBBA), an intriguing mystery, lots of laughs, surprises galore, a snarky screenplay…this should have been a hit.  Did Warner Bros. refuse to advertise it?  Or did they advertise it incorrectly?  (20th Century Fox did that with Fight Club.)  Was it – gasp! – too smart for the general public?

Who can say?  Regardless of box office performance or name recognition, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang will always stand, for me, as one of the greatest comedy mystery meta-noirs of all time.  (Of course, with that many genre tags, it may BE the only one of its kind…)

QUICK TAKE: A History of Violence (2005)

By Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: Viggo Mortenson, Maria Bello, Ed Harris, William Hurt
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 87% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A mild-mannered husband and father (Mortenson) becomes a local hero through an act of violence, which sets off repercussions that will shake his family to its very core.


A History of Violence is an art film disguised as a Hollywood thriller.  It makes some statements about the nature of violence that would be at home in an Ingmar Bergman film, but cloaks them in a conventional plot that, unbelievably, is based on a graphic novel.  (I’ve read that graphic novel, which goes down some gruesome paths not explored by the movie.)

It’s riveting.  As a pure thriller, this movie is gangbusters.  (I thought the ending was a tad abrupt, so I take away a point.)  The central mystery, about an everyman who is mistaken for a ruthless killer, will keep you guessing.  It also has some troubling things to say about violence itself.  Through various events in the film, it’s almost like the moral of the story is the equivalent of Patrick Swayze’s famous line from Roadhouse: “Be nice, until it’s time to NOT be nice.”  Gandhi would not have approved.

I can’t recommend this movie enough.  Find it, watch it, do it.

QUICK TAKE: Serenity (2005)

By Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Joss Whedon
Cast: Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Summer Glau, Adam Baldwin, Chiwetel Ejiofor
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 83% Certified Fresh

PLOT: The crew of the ship Serenity tries to evade an assassin sent to recapture one of their members who is telepathic…and perhaps something more…


In a perfect world, Han Solo would still have shot Greedo in cold blood, not self-defense.  Universal would have stopped with Jaws 2.  Heath Ledger would still be around for at least one more Dark Knight film.

And in that perfect world, Serenity would have spawned two more films, each better than the one before, for a trilogy that would be in the conversation for greatest science-fiction franchise ever.

I do not say this as a fan of Firefly, the short-lived, devoutly-worshipped television show upon which Serenity is based.  When I first saw this movie in 2005, I had no idea why the pilot had dinosaurs on the cockpit dashboard.  I didn’t know why it was such a big deal to see River Tam, this wisp of a girl, performing intricate fight scenes right out of a Jackie Chan movie.  I didn’t know why the characters sprinkled Chinese or Japanese phrases in the middle of their dialogue (sometimes cursing in those languages).  Or why they talked like it was the old West instead of hundreds or thousands of years in the future.

Know what?  It didn’t matter.  Serenity is so well-made and well-written that, after the two main opening sequences, I rolled with it.  I had an immediate sense of the vast history of this “used” universe and the characters within it.  In this world (taking a cue from “Star Wars”), the good guys fly rust-buckets, not sterile starships.  It’s a pure visual pleasure from start to finish.

The great story, screenplay, acting (from actors who are clearly enjoying themselves), effective usage of visual effects, genuine surprises, and one bona fide shocker that had audiences gasping and yelling at the screen…it’s all here.  Shiny!

QUICK TAKE: Thank You for Smoking (2005)

By Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Jason Reitman
Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, Adam Brody, Sam Elliott, Katie Holmes, Rob Lowe, William H. Macy, Robert Duvall
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 86% Certified Fresh

PLOT: Nick Naylor (Eckhart), Big Tobacco’s chief spokesman, spins the facts on behalf of cigarettes while trying to remain a role model for his twelve-year-old son.


I’ll keep this one brief.

There is a LOT to unpack in this movie: satirical effectiveness, logical arguments, debate about an intensely divisive topic.  And no, I’m not talking about race, I’m talking about cigarettes.

A full discussion would run a full twelve inches down this page.  Don’t wanna do that.

I’ll just say that this is one of the funniest, sharpest satires I’ve ever seen.  It makes a good guy out of the chief spin doctor for an industry that kills, quote, “two jumbo jet plane loads of men, women and children” a DAY.  (That’s from the film, not actual research, so take it with a grain of salt.)  It demonstrates how the art of deflection during an argument can be perfected to prove virtually anything.  It’s a commentary on both the pro- and anti-smoking movements, and how they’re both right, and they’re both wrong.  (That’s right.  I said it.)  It advocates choice over blind obedience.

And it’s funny, funny, funny.  Another one of those movies designed to be discussed afterwards in conversations that could NEVER be contained within the words of any movie review I could write.  Just take my word for it.  You won’t regret it.

TRANSPORTER 2 (2005)

By Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Louis Leterrier
Cast: Jason Statham, Alessandro Gassman, Amber Valletta
My Rating: 6/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 51%

PLOT: An extremely skilled mercenary driver (Statham) is implicated in the kidnapping of the young son of a powerful USA drug official.


When an action film includes a shot of the good guy flipping his car off a ramp so a dangling crane hook can clip off a bomb stuck underneath the car mere SECONDS before it goes off…you either laugh and roll with it or scoff and leave the theater.  I laughed.

Transporter 2 is an example of a movie not really intended for American audiences.  From top to bottom, this is a European action movie, made in the States with the kind of budget unknown in foreign studios.  It was produced by none other than Luc Besson, director of cult classics like Léon: The Professional and The Fifth Element.  Here he farms out directing duties to Louis Leterrier, a genre specialist known for Jet Li’s Unleashed, the original Transporter, and, later on, an honest-to-God entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Incredible Hulk.

This movie is utter junk food.  It aspires to the kind of delirious cartoonish heights that would later be achieved by Shoot ‘Em Up (2007), but it fails due to too many breaks in the action.  And if you have too many breaks in a movie that’s barely 80 minutes long, something has gone wrong at the screenplay level.  In a movie like this, adding depth of character just gets in the way of the action.

The action itself, while mildly stunning visually, is too sparse.  There’s an extended fight scene in a basement that’s imaginative and well done, making creative use of a fire hose.  There’s a one-sided gun battle in a doctor’s office.  The lone car chase in the film sees the infamous building-to-building car jump from Lethal Weapon 2 and raises it.  And, of course, the bomb-removing flip to a crane.  (I can’t even discuss the finale aboard a plummeting private jet without wincing.)

Other than that, not much here, folks.  For me, this is an all-too-obvious guilty pleasure, something to toss into the player and jack the volume up so the gun battles rattle the walls.  The absurdity of the action allows the movie to flirt with camp classic status, but I usually just fast-forward to the parts where stuff gets blowed up real good.

SHANG CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS

By Marc S. Sanders

Marvel’s installment of Shang Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings boasts a good cast and set up for an Asian superhero and his band of allies.  I only have one question, couldn’t some of this stuff have waited for the sequel?

Dave Callaham and Andrew Lanham wrote an adventurous screenplay for Destin Daniel Cretton (Just Mercy) to direct.  It’s fun and frolicking with magnificent action set pieces that take place on an out of control metro bus on the streets of San Francisco (where every out of control vehicle or car chase work best) and later on a high rise scaffolding in Macau.  While some sequences easily reveal the CGI work at play, the edited choreography of these martial arts scenes work beautifully. 

During the bus sequence, spread eagle jumps and high kicks and low punches by Shang Chi (Simu Liu) are done like a fine dance number as he fights off a gang of thugs who are mysteriously after the pendant he wears around his neck.  Comedienne Awkwafina plays Shang’s best friend Katy who rides the bus crazier than Sandra Bullock ever did.  Later the pursuit of the MaGuffin pendant leads into a meet up with Shang’s equally capable sister Xu Xialing (Meng’er Zhang) and the high-rise scaffolding fight occurs.  Marvelous work in both of these scenes.  The CGI is certainly forgivable.

After that, the film calms itself down to bridge some exposition that was revealed in the prologue of the film.  Shang and Xialing seem to have some parental issues.  Their father Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung) somehow acquired a set of ten magically powerful rings that he wears on both forearms.  Like other rings in fantasy/adventure films, these items take out armies and do nothing but conquer.   For once, could these powerful items just make a cup of hot tea or a decent wax job on my car?  When Wenwu uncovers a hidden majestic location to take over, he meets and becomes smitten with Ying Li (Fala Chen).  They fall in love and you’d think they’d live happily ever after, but if that were the case then there would be no movie.    

Beyond what’s described here, not much else mattered to me with this film.  The rings might as well have been Thor’s hammer or Captain America’s shield, or a Maltese Falcon.  A large, epic and very, very long climactic battle takes place so that one of Hollywood’s better known Asian actresses (Michelle Yeoh) can come into the picture and fight.  There’s also a return of a relatively unfavorite character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), the fake out terrorist from Iron Man 3, that pissed off a collection of die hard Marvel geeks yearning for an appearance of the known villain called The Mandarin.  Shang Chi reminds us that this once reputably “threatening” villain is named after an orange.  Yup!  Get over it.  He’s as scary as an orange.  Moving on!  Beyond these appearances, are kaleidoscopes of colorful fantasy creatures like flying serpent dragons and furballs with wings and no face, as well as lion like four legged creatures.  Plenty of stuff for Disney/Marvel to merchandise.

I was seeing a story in Shang Chi, and then I wasn’t.  The long battle sequence goes on and on and on as a means to show off new toys and stuffed animals for the kids.  It all looks very good but it doesn’t lend credence to any storytelling like say in The Lord Of The Rings fare, where an Org could progress a story.  Here, it’s all overkill. 

The strength of Shang Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings lies in an enthusiastically fun cast and the outstanding martial arts moments that are presented.  The fantasy material is too much icing on the cake.  The graphics are good and all but couldn’t that fantasy stuff have been held for another film later on perhaps?  Go with one thing first and then another thing next, because after a while I forgot what kind of movie I was watching and why.

The cast is fine in their roles.  Just fine though.  Simu Liu has the athletic build for the title character.  He looks sharp in the costumes and fight sequences.  Though the fantasy material really takes away from the ranges that we could have appreciated from as an actor.  It’s clear this script is not giving him the same rightful opportunities for good super hero acting that was awarded to Robert Downey Jr or Brie Larson.  Equally same goes for Tony Leung and Meng’er Zhang.  They kind of plain jane.  Awakwfina is given the most to play with for the escapist humor as a fun loving karaoke singer and crazy valet driver.  Later, she quickly becomes an expert archer.  Good stuff there. 

Let’s face it the Asian community sect within Hollywood is not as well represented as it should be by now.  Box office numbers of the past have more than justified a need for Asian culture to be front and center in mainstream films.  There’s been some highlights in the past, most namely with the work of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, and films of merit like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Crazy Rich Asians.  It’s pleasing to know that Marvel Comics created a character like Shang Chi back in the late 1970’s.  It just wasn’t capitalized back then as a marquee name like the Hulk or Spider-Man.  Still, Disney and Marvel could have tried a little bit harder here.  Just when I thought we were getting some dimension and checkered past subject matter for Shang Chi and his family to struggle with, Cretton’s film diverts into visual CGI fantasy Candy Land with no depth or substance. 

My recommendation on the next installment, is for Marvel and Disney to dig deeper.  I know there’s a wealth of storytelling here.  So, use a bigger shovel that’ll dig itself all the way to China.