It’s impossible to dislike any movie that starts with Orson Welles (at his Paul Masson wine-commercial most faux pretentious) lying his head off about a supposedly newly discovered historical event that could have prevented the French Revolution, only to sourly conclude that “men of integrity — and I may say of considerable resources — have […]
With the five or six functioning brain cells remaining to me after watching The Dukes of Hazzard (I know people who’ve come off two-week benders with less brain damage than I feel I suffered from 105 minutes of this movie), I’ve been trying to think of anything vaguely positive to say about it. All I […]
“Friday, April 17, 4 p.m. — Venice, California. Huckleberry P. Jones, local pimp, narcotics peddler, and slumlord was seen entering a vacant house that he owned. While stashing some heroin in the basement, he stumbled upon a mysterious door. Naturally, he entered …” So begins Richard Elfman’s 1980 cult classic, Forbidden Zone, as wild a […]
Take the director of Surviving Christmas, some fresh-faced kids, a premise borrowed from The Incredibles with a dash of Mean Girls, and then toss in a few cult figures (B-list stars with rabid followings) like Kurt Russell, Lynda Carter and Bruce Campbell, and you get Sky High, a pleasant enough collection of derivative predictability that’s […]
In a world where mindless action movies are a dime a dozen, in a season when the testosterone flows like water, in an industry where mediocrity is all too often praised, one filmmaker dares to change forever what we mean when we say “lowest common denominator.” Seven months into the year he presents us with […]
I’ve never quite subscribed to the view that The Magnificent Ambersons would have been a better film than Citizen Kane if only it hadn’t been mutilated by the studio while Welles was out of the country. But, hey, that notion makes a great story that adds to the myth of Orson Welles — and, of […]
The first question that comes to mind when watching Bad News Bears — a remake of Michael Ritchie’s 1976 film The Bad News Bears — is, what is the point? There has to be a better reason to remake a movie than to drop the word “the” from its title. Yet that seems to be […]
This is a pretty straightforward, unflinching documentary about the heroin problem in Vancouver, British Columbia, focusing on activist Ann Livingston and her relationship (both personal and professional) with addict/activist Dean Wilson, as well as then-Mayor Philip Owen’s attempts to combat the problem by establishing “safe” zones for addicts where shooting up is less dangerous. Those […]
OK, I was wrong. This isn’t the disaster of a movie I thought it would be, based on the premise and the trailer. In fact, it’s a pretty darn good film, though I’d be hard-pressed to see it as the great work of art it’s been touted as in some quarters. It is, however, a […]
The cast in this cookie-cutter romantic comedy is almost enough to make me want to bump my rating up a half star. The movie’s not bad. It’s harmless and enjoyable — but it’ll float right out of your brain within a couple hours of seeing it, and there’s nary a single fall-down-funny gag in its […]
OK, let’s get this straight: The Devil’s Rejects is a violent, sadistic, brutal horror picture punctuated with humor that’s blacker than the greasepaint festooning Sid Haig’s lips for his clown makeup. There are no likable characters. And if the movie has any message at all, it is undoubtedly reprehensible, since the closest it comes to […]
If this were a Survivor game, you’d have to wonder if it would be possible for The Island to vote itself off itself. This should come as no great surprise, since The Island is a Michael Bay movie — even if it is a Michael Bay movie that manages to squander the combined talents of […]
There’s more manic invention, creativity and the sheer joy of filmmaking in any five minutes of Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory than has yet been seen in all the mainstream releases of 2005 put together. The film is not going to be to everyone’s liking — and thank God for that, because a […]
There’s a moment in The Sound of Music where Eleanor Parker appears on the scene with a pitcher of pink lemonade, announcing that the concoction is “not too sour, not too sweet.” To this Richard Haydn wryly comments, “Just too pink.” Having thus destroyed my street cred as a curmudgeon by being able to recall […]
This is the movie that made Troma Films what it is today — and remarkably, its creators escaped prosecution. Prior to this film, Troma had specialized in soft-core porn, which this effort resembles with its bad lighting, bad acting, bad scripting, gratuitous sex scenes and — worst of all — nonstop porno-movie musical score. But […]
Perhaps because I spent a large chunk of my misspent youth as a photographer, I am a little resistant to the charms and emotional resonance of weddings. After you’ve heard the service more in one month than Zsa Zsa Gabor has in a lifetime, and have witnessed the same mildly crude jokes and all the […]
Only in the world of a Wim Wenders film would an angel express the desire to go home and read a Philip Marlowe mystery as one of the reasons he’d like to be human. But because that desire is expressed in a Wim Wenders film, it seems completely reasonable. And if that makes sense to […]
Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent film about the trial and execution of Joan of Arc is often cited as “one of the best films ever made” — something that too often means you’re about to get cinematic cauliflower (it’s good for you, but you may not much like it). Yet Dreyer’s film remains among the most […]
If you took The Ring, The Grudge, The Tenant, The Sentinel, Rosemary’s Baby, The Changeling, The Devil’s Backbone, Repulsion, The Ring Two and The Others, dropped them into a blender and pressed “puree,” you’d probably get something like Dark Water. This slow-paced art film of some considerable merit has bamboozled its way into multiplexes by […]
When it was first released in 1967, Richard Burton’s film version of Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus was pretty soundly trounced by the critics. And while from today’s perspective it’s not hard to see why, it is hard to understand how they didn’t at least recognize they were in the presence of a […]
Saying I’ve seen worse things than Fantastic Four loses any qualitative meaning when you realize I’m talking about such worse things as Freddy Got Fingered, The Adventures of Pluto Nash and House of the Dead. It is worth noting, however, that FF is certainly an improvement over such similar outings as Catwoman and Elektra. All […]
