Robert Rodriguez collaborates with his kids on this whimsical fantasy that celebrates and encourages the fantasy lives of children. See a very young Taylor Lautner as Sharkboy.
Tag: 2005
‘Brick’- High school noir on Criterion Channel
Brick (2005), the debut feature from Star Trek: The Last Jedi filmmaker Rian Johnson, puts the collected works of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett in a blender with a jigger of teenage melodrama and pours it into a high school mold. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays things so close to his chest that he’s almost unreadable as […]
Steve Carrell is ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin’ on HBO Max
Steve Carrell is a sweet, shy middle-aged geek and the last American virgin in The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), the feature debut of director Judd Apatow (who wrote the film with Carrell), an oddly sweet mix of romantic comedy and adolescent shenanigans, albeit with a slightly older cast. When he’s pulled out of the stock room […]
‘Batman Begins’ – Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight on Hulu
One of the defining films in the elevation of comic book movies to adult fare, Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins (2005) rebooted the Batman mythos for the big screen, bringing the often lighthearted hero back to the shadows, both figuratively and literally. It’s quite a leap from the previous Batman revival launched by Tim Burton’s 1989 […]
‘The Descent’ – subterranean horror on Amazon Prime
British genre maven Neil Marshall howled his arrival with his werewolf combat thriller Dog Soldiers, a sly and inspired UK hit that made cult ripples stateside. With The Descent (2005), a nerve wracking, claustrophobic survival thriller about six spelunking women hunted by the creepiest cave dwellers to skitter across a screen, Marshall honed his skills […]
Ethan Hawke in ‘Assault on Precinct 13’ on HBO Max
Assault on Precinct 13 (2005) is a surprisingly taut, tight, effective remake of John Carpenter’s genuine debut feature (I count Dark Star as a practice run). Ethan Hawke stars as a former undercover cop who hit the bottle and retreated to desk work after one case went horribly wrong. Now a gun-shy station commander overseeing […]
Keanu Reeves is ‘Constantine’
As fans of the cult comic book Hellblazer will tell you, Keanu Reeves doesn’t look or act much like comic book anti-hero John Constantine in Constantine (2005), the big screen version of the story of the streetwise supernatural hustler. He does, however, cut a memorable figure with his lockjaw resolve and iconic wardrobe, playing the […]
Nicolas Cage is the ‘Lord of War’ on Amazon Prime
“There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That’s one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other 11?” The opening line of Andrew Niccol’s Lord of War (2005) captures the film in a phrase: it’s serious, it’s sardonic, and it has both a […]
‘V For Vendetta’ – Fighting tyranny on HBO Max
V For Vendetta (2005) – “People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. The government should be afraid of the people.” His name is nowhere to be seen in the credits but this futuristic thriller about an authoritarian government out of 1984 and a lone revolutionary who takes them on comes from Alan Moore’s acclaimed graphic […]
‘Good Night, and Good Luck.’ – Why journalism matters on Netflix
David Strathairn plays broadcast journalism godfather Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005, PG), George Clooney’s austere, astounding drama about his career-threatening decision to use the airwaves to take on Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1953. Directing in a stripped down style, Clooney’s direction captures the […]