tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55003692008-08-08T07:09:54.344-05:00XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comBlogger303125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1104954841477226842005-01-05T14:52:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:29.067-05:00

What was the best movie of the year?The AviatorCollateralEternal Sunshine of the Spotless MindFahrenheit 9/11The IncrediblesKill Bill, Vol. 2KinseyMaria Full of GraceMillion Dollar BabySideways Free polls from Pollhost.com

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1103879027012339242004-12-24T03:59:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:28.857-05:00

EW critic Owen Gleiberman's top 10 films of 2004: 1. Sideways 2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 3. The Incredibles 4. Maria Full of Grace 5. Kinsey 6. Before Sunset 7. Osama 8. Open Water 9. 13 Going on 30 10. Ray

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1103878793366742332004-12-24T03:57:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:28.708-05:00

EW critic Lisa Schwarzbaum's top 10 films of 2004: 1. Sideways 2. Million Dollar Baby 3. The Incredibles 4. Maria Full of Grace 5. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 6. Moolaade 7. Collateral 8. The Aviator 9. The Return 10. Bright Leaves

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1103581829187991472004-12-20T17:20:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:28.528-05:00

Roger Ebert's Best Films of 2004: 1. Million Dollar Baby 2. Kill Bill, Vol. 2 3. Vera Drake 4. Spider-Man 2 5. Moolaade 6. The Aviator 7. Baadasssss! 8. Sideways 9. Hotel Rwanda 10. Undertow No. 7 is particularly comical...

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1103324109478764042004-12-17T17:42:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:28.425-05:00

I now present the three best albums of the year: 1. This is post-punk at its best. Interpol has now released two singularly brilliant albums, both of which will become rock classics (see their 2002 debut album, Turn on the Bright Lights, which earned them favorable comparisons with the likes of Joy Division and The Fall). 2. Addictive beyond repair, this New Wave glam rock band

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1103322443580660652004-12-17T17:21:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:28.302-05:00

And the National Board of Review's top ten picks for 2004: 1. Finding Neverland 2. The Aviator 3. Closer 4. Million Dollar Baby 5. Sideways 6. Kinsey 7. Vera Drake 8. Ray 9. Collateral 10. Hotel Rwanda Finding Neverland was much too sappy for top honors. However, Johnny Depp was indeed shown to be the most versatile actor alive.

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1103321798739820432004-12-17T17:11:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:28.167-05:00

New York Magazine film critic Ken Tucker's Top Ten of 2004: 1. Sideways 2. The Incredibles 3. How to Draw a Bunny 4. Collateral 5. House of Flying Daggers 6. End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones 7. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 8. Kill Bill, Vol. 2 9. A Very Long Engagement 10. Fahrenheit 9/11 If only Vol. 2 were really a top ten film...Tarantino, you disappointed

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1103321259705311042004-12-17T17:00:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:28.001-05:00

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone has chosen his top 10 films of 2004: 1. Sideways 2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 3. Million Dollar Baby 4. The Aviator 5. The Incredibles 6. Kinsey 7. Closer 8. Finding Neverland 9. Kill Bill, Vol. 2 10. Fahrenheit 9/11 Fahrenheit 9/11--campaign advertisement as film? Please. In that case, the Swift Boat ads were infinitely more

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1103320631025831322004-12-17T16:50:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:27.805-05:00

AFI's 10 best films of 2004 (in alphabetical order): -The Aviator -Collateral -Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind -Friday Night Lights -The Incredibles -Kinsey -Maria Full of Grace -Million Dollar Baby -Sideways -Spider-Man 2 Kinsey is so overrated. It's the typical injured-intellectual movie that has become so fashionable since A Beautiful Mind. And in no way does it even

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1102978155738878602004-12-13T17:31:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:27.650-05:00

Bolstered by the support of veteran director James L. Brooks and producer Polly Platt, Wes Anderson attained a status in the late 1990s that most young filmmakers only dream of achieving--he proved that he could work within the Hollywood studio system and still create distinctive, willfully quirky films infused with an independent sensibility. Anderson's masterpiece, Rushmore, was completed

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1102893399186180842004-12-12T17:55:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:27.484-05:00

Director/screenwriter/actor/producer Quentin Tarantino was perhaps the most distinctive and volatile talent to emerge in American film in the early '90s. Unlike the previous generation of American filmmakers, Tarantino learned his craft from his days as a video clerk, rather than as a film school student. Consequently, he developed an audacious fusion of pop culture and independent art house

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1102806528038061282004-12-11T17:40:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:27.338-05:00

Combining thoughtful eccentricity, wry humor, arch irony, and often brutal violence, the films of the Coen brothers have become synonymous with a style of filmmaking that pays tribute to classic American movie genres--especially film noir--while sustaining a firmly postmodern feel. Beginning with Blood Simple, their brutal, stylish 1984 debut, the brothers have amassed a body of work that has

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1098397979177488372004-12-10T16:00:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:27.175-05:00

Sarcasm masking sensitivity and vulnerability is a theme with which Terry Zwigoff is quite familiar. Zwigoff's first feature-length documentary, Crumb (1994), proved to be a devastating examination of a family utterly divorced from mainstream "normalcy" as well as a portrait of a uniquely twisted artist. Crumb's emotionally disturbed brother Maxon was a particularly poignant reminder of the

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1098301143008872882004-10-20T14:23:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:27.016-05:00

British film director Stephen Daldry has only given us two movies, and yet they are both true gems. His first feature was 2000's Billy Elliot, set in northern England, against the gritty backdrop of the 1984 coal miner strikes. Billy Elliot's story of a boy's desire to be a ballet dancer was praised and damned for its sentimentality, with critics declaring it either a moving story of triumphant

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1095350849446757462004-09-16T10:35:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:26.814-05:00

In the last three years, Alfonso Cuarón has left an indelible mark upon the film world. Among the most successful and talked-about Mexican filmmakers of his generation, Cuarón has shown a remarkable versatility, able to embrace the Hollywood blockbuster as well as rough-edged and darker-themed contemporary stories set to please independent film buffs. In 1995, Cuarón released his first

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1095271490277037022004-09-15T15:52:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:26.666-05:00

After directing The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003), Peter Jackson has easily cemented his reputation as the most ambitious director alive today. The three sprawling films about a hobbit and his ring have done for the new millennium what the Star Wars trilogy did for the 70's and 80's. Jackson managed to create an entirely different world on film--a whole other mythology that differs from our

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1095178661989245282004-09-14T10:51:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:26.471-05:00

After such heart-wrenching pictures of suburban hell and general human dysfunction as 1995's Welcome to the Dollhouse and 1998's Happiness, Todd Solondz has firmly established himself as the miscreant's director. Dollhouse tells the bleak, perverse tale of outcast teenager Dawn "Wienerdog" Wiener (played expertly by Heather Matarazzo). When Dawn asks a fellow student at her junior high why he

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1091654167715764112004-08-03T05:12:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:26.244-05:00

"She'll be reaching for the sleeping pills within a week, and you and me, we'll laugh about this until we're very old men." Those are the words of Aaron Eckhart's lead character in Neil LaBute's shocking psychological drama, In the Company of Men. Few movies have attracted the kind of attention that LaBute's first film attracted upon its 1997 release. Some praised the film as brilliant,

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1091481361928285122004-08-02T05:23:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:26.087-05:00

Oliver Stone provided us with the definitive paean to self-realizing violence in his 1994 masterpiece, Natural Born Killers. Rife with metaphor, mayhem, and murder, the film captures the logical conclusion to the existential angst that was bound to grow out of the sterile materialism of the 1980s. Indeed, Stone even resorted to the help of musical miscreant Trent Reznor for added sonic

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1091414729649210362004-08-01T21:32:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:25.791-05:00

Move over Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese. For the past 10 years, high-profile directors like Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas have become essentially disposable. The best films of the last 10 years have not come from any of these esteemed directors. Rather, there is a new band of elite directors that have shaped, and continue to shape, the contours of film. For the next 2 weeks, I

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1091120589246786342004-07-29T05:46:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:25.623-05:00

I've come up with a list of the top 5 movies released so far this year, in case you need to catch up. They are: 1. Alfonso Cuarón's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 2. Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2 3. Jared Hess's Napoleon Dynamite 4. Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ 5. Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Read 'em and weep.

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1091031789498135002004-07-28T05:26:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:25.518-05:00

Adam McKay's Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy is not a particularly funny movie. In fact, it feels just like a Saturday Night Live skit (circa 2003) that goes on for a little too long. Nay, for way too long. Anchorman tells the story of '70s news anchor Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) who, despite his raging ego and hormones, is the most popular news reader in San Diego. But his status is

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1090893507429314022004-07-27T05:52:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:25.404-05:00

Spider-Man 2 is an explosive, frantic, roller-coaster ride of a movie. It’s the kind of movie that leaves you with a satiated feeling at the end, and yet you know that you really want just a little bit more. It is the quintessential summer blockbuster on many levels: the story is ripe with a nontrivial existential crisis which confounds our beloved superhero; the characters have matured and

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1090859553049292762004-07-25T23:28:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:25.242-05:00

IT'S OFFICIAL: Jim Dedman over at JIM DEDMAN: Infandum ... iubes renovare dolorem is a deadbeat blogger. He hasn't posted anything of substance on his site since November 2003, well over a month ago. Alas. UPDATE: Pot: "Kettle, thou art black!"

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5500369.post-1087843329627349672004-06-21T07:05:00.000-05:002006-11-12T01:18:24.739-05:00

Exactly one year ago today, I embarked on this uncertain journey towards the blogosphere. I must say that it's very difficult to consistently maintain a blog for very long: life goes on, whether you have something interesting to say or not. Time's arrogant march forward humbles even the most willful among us as the days pass without having updated, without having reviewed, or without having

XAVIER MORALES, ESQ.noreply@blogger.com