Let me start by saying I love movies. I love raving about the standouts, ranting about the bombs, and debating the in-between. That said, anyone interested in movies also reads movie reviews. They’re the easiest way for us consumers to avoid spending $9 for the garbage that Hollywood likes to pawn off on us as entertainment. But of course, movies are very subjective. Even if you and another person like the same movie, chances are, you like it for different reasons. Movie reviewers are the same way. Sadly most movie reviewers mistake their job title for movie “critic” and do everything in their power to poke holes and generally complain about every movie they see. When I started college, the internet was just starting to boom and one of the sites that I discovered was movie-list.com (which is still around). On the site they featured the reviews of Canadian amatuer movie reviewer named Dean Kish (pen name: The Soothsayer). To this day I know almost nothing about Mr. Kish and it’s never been clear about how exactly someone in Canada got access to so many Hollywood screenings (most of them advance screenings). Nevertheless, Mr. Kish’s movie reviews were exceptional in that they were almost exactly in line with my own thoughts on the film. In fact I can say that in any given year’s worth of movie reviews I may have disagreed with 3-4. I can’t even recall how much money he saved me in potential movie tickets to movies that got a lot of hype but were actually horrible. His reviews were so dead-on that I just stopped reading any other movie reviewer’s commentary and relied solely on his.
Sadly, in early 2007 Mr. Kish reluctantly withdrew from his movie reviewing as a change in jobs prevented him from attending screenings. Later Mr. Kish changed jobs again into a role that involved him writing scripts for television and his contract further prohibited him from publishing movie reviews. So, in honor of Mr. Kish’s departure from movie reviewing I’ve decided to post reviews of the movies that I’m seeing using his four-star + comments system. These will not be extensive reviews or critiques in which I compare and contrast the stylist exposition of the director’s lighting or any other tedious bullshit. Just a simple star rating, summarizing comments, and whether the movie is worth buying, renting, or ignoring. I also will not be retroactively reviewing movies. I’m starting with what I see as of today.