Tamlyn Tomita

GUY #1: I don't know how he doesn't sleep with Famke Janssen in that movie, it's friggin' mystifying to me. She's all legs and hair.

Continue reading: The Joy Luck Club Review

It starts off bad enough. As the credits announce the four writer/directors (Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino), a cartoon sequence plays over them, in the tradition of cinematic masterpieces like Mannequin. This sets the stage: New Year's Eve at Hollywood's Mon Signor Hotel and only one bellhop (Tim Roth), and believe me, it's a rillyrilly wacky place. The film then launches into the first of four 30ish-minute shorts, one by each director.

Continue reading: Four Rooms Review

The title isn't a metaphor; the movie is composed of four robot-centric shorts. There is "My Robot Baby," in which two prospective parents undergo a more technologically advanced version of the old egg-sitting lesson; "The Robot Fixer," in which an elderly woman tends to her grown son's collection of toy robots as he lies comatose in the hospital; "Machine Love," featuring an advanced computer who looks, and begins to act, like a human; and "Clay," about a dying man resisting a mandate that his consciousness be preserved digitally.

Continue reading: Robot Stories Review

"The Day After Tomorrow" isn't quite the disaster of a disaster flick I thought it would be.

Don't get me wrong -- it's bad in a way only $150-million movies with awe-inspiring special effects can be bad. It's riddled with nonsensical pseudo-science, saddled with supposedly brainy characters (climatologists, high-school science whizzes) who nonetheless haven't a scrap of common sense, and stuffed with stock characters designed for the kind of instant sympathy (or instant comic relief) that doesn't require actually giving them a personality.

But for popcorn munching and smart-remarking during a bargain matinee, it's a bad movie worth the price of admission.

Continue reading: The Day After Tomorrow Review