Category: Film

‘Snow Dogs’ too cute for its own good

Jae-Ha Kim

“Snow Dogs” is a cute Disney movie that youngsters most likely will enjoy. There are enough adorable dogs and cartoonish antics to keep the Saturday morning cartoon set giggling. Is it as good as the old “Benji” films? No. It’s not even as entertaining as a really good “Scooby Doo” rerun. But we tolerate the silly plot because the film’s got a lot of heart, the scenery is gorgeous and the dogs are pretty darned likable, as is lead human actor Cuba Gooding Jr.

‘Impostor’ is a little too unbelievable

Jae-Ha Kim

The year is 2079. For more than a decade, earthlings have battled an alien force that is stronger, smarter and more deadly than anything the human race has encountered. To protect themselves from further destruction, most of the planet has been covered by an electromagnetic force-field dome designed to prevent aliens from infiltrating earth and masquerading as human beings.

What’re you doing New Year’s Eve?

Jae-Ha Kim

What’re you doing New Year’s Eve? Let’s take a guess. You don’t have a date for the big night. Or, if you do, the two of you are dreading the thought of dealing with booked restaurants, inebriated revelers and couples trying just a little too hard to prove they’re having the best night of their lives. Then again, who wants to spend $300 for a night on the town when the economy is so iffy?

Hip-hoppers go to Harvard in dopey ‘How High’

Jae-Ha Kim

The film features hip-hop stars Method Man and Redman as a pair of pot-smoking fiends who find refuge at Harvard University. The catch is they have to maintain a 2.0 average to remain there, and without studying, they can do this only with the aid of a friendly ghost who appears when they smoke joints rolled with his ashes.

Assassination characters on target in ‘Bangkok’

Jae-Ha Kim

Kong is a deaf-mute assassin unable to hear his victims begging for mercy or the cacophonous roar of his gun as he completes his assignments. He quickly and meticulously silences his victims in “Bangkok Dangerous,” a beautiful, gory film in which there are no heroes–just bad guys and not-quite-as-bad guys. Directed and written by twins Oxide and Danny Pang, the film assaults your senses with its stylized brutality. Set in Bangkok, the picture depicts the squalor of the characters’ lives. There is no beauty in this Bangkok–just dank despair.

“Out Cold” — A boring snowboarding comedy

Jae-Ha Kim

What could have been a cute comedy is hidden way, way below the surface of “Out Cold.” Just as the film teases its teen audience with the promise of almost but not-quite-there female nudity, this PG-13 movie dances with the possibility of being engaging. But a recurring cruel streak and a cliched, boring script that clumsily attempts to parody “Fight Club” and “Casablanca” trips up the fun.

‘Chop Suey’ is a feast for the eyes

Jae-Ha Kim

The camera is focused on a group of young friends. Each is more handsome than the next. They have the kind of hard, fit bodies you only find at the Olympics or on the cover of GQ magazine. As moviegoers watch the men, filmmaker Bruce Weber relays the story on how he, at their age, was too embarrassed to change clothes in front of other boys in the locker room. He wistfully admits, “We sometimes photograph things we can never be.”

‘N Sync’s Lance Bass ‘On the Line’ in his first film

Jae-Ha Kim

Envy me, girls. I am in Lance Bass’s hotel room and guess what? He happens to be here, too.
Never mind that we’re surrounded by his assistant, makeup artist, a handful of publicists and a photographer. I think I saw love in his eyes. OK, maybe it was just the sunlight reflecting from the windows of the W Hotel on Lake Shore Drive. But the point is, Bass–one-fifth of the phenomenally popular boy band ‘N Sync–is so charming he can even make cranky reporters smile.

‘Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade’ a war movie without any heroes

Jae-Ha Kim

What if Japan had been occupied by Nazi Germany after World War II? “Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade” explores this possibility by presenting an alternative nation. In this Japanese animated film, Tokyo is dark, bleak and industrial. The city is a war zone, with the police and military battling a small but well-trained group of elite terrorists who negotiate their way through the city’s sewer system. They employ women and children to act as decoys. They have all been trained to believe there is honor in dying for their cause.

“Lisa Picard is Famous”

Jae-Ha Kim

A t the end of “Lisa Picard Is Famous,” Griffin Dunne says, “Sometimes reality just needs a little push.” Apparently, that’s what the filmmakers were trying to accomplish with this mockumentary. Dunne portrays a filmmaker named Andrew, whose goal is to document a person on the brink of fame. But fame is a nebulous thing, and trying to anticipate who will become famous enough to sell his documentary is a crapshoot. He thinks he has found a winning subject in Lisa Picard, a Penelope Miller look-alike who has won some notoriety for starring in a suggestive cereal commercial.

‘Creepers’ nothing to scream about

Jae-Ha Kim

“You know the part in scary movies where somebody does something really stupid and everybody hates them for it?,” Trish says to her thrill-seeking brother, Darry, in the horror film “Jeepers Creepers.” “Well, this is it.” Right on cue, lil’ bro’ falls down a drainage pipe that leads to a deserted church basement decorated in tacky 1970s gore. There are a few hundred dead (but incredibly well-preserved) bodies here, a sutured stomach or neck part there. Nothing he can’t handle. Yet.

She is Hooked on DVDs: Like millions of others, staff reporter Jae-Ha Kim shamelessly cast aside her VCR in favor of new technology. Now she gets her kicks buying films on those CD-like discs

Jae-Ha Kim

Those shiny, pristine CD-like discs are my obsession. Each time I get a new one, it’s like I’m getting a sweet gift. Besides their affordable price, they are a movie buff’s dream. Sure, there’s the prime attraction of the movie. But most discs contain myriad treats, such as the director’s commentary, alternate endings, the option to watch the film with subtitles or listen to it in a foreign language, interviews with the cast and so on.