Bulletproof Monk

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Yes, it’s silly and stupid. I can also add that it’s not terribly well made. The lighting is questionable, the editing is ragged and the process-work (oh, yeah, those monks really appear to be battling on a mile-high rope bridge) looks like state of the art, circa 1962. Most of early reviews of Monk pummel […]

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

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With John Madden at the helm and Nicolas Cage as an opera-singing Italian soldier (complete with dubious accent), Captain Corelli’s Mandolin very easily could have turned into Mussolini in Love. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. Granted, the film has its share of problems — something Universal signaled loud and clear when they pushed the release back […]

Cast Away

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I have to confess up front that I am one of the few people who did not in the least admire Forrest Gump, so I was looking forward to the reteaming of star Tom Hanks and director Robert Zemeckis with the same degree of enthusiasm usually reserved for a festival of Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis films. […]

Catch Me If You Can

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Steven Spielberg is back with a more accessible, viewer friendly film than either A.I. or Minority Report — and Catch Me If You Can is apt to ingratiate him to admirers who were not thrilled by the direction those other two films indicated he was taking. Many will doubtless view this as a return to […]

Changing Lanes

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I have no earthly idea just what it is that so many critics are seeing in this monumentally stupid waste of an astonishing array of talent. There are more plot holes, unrealistic coincidences and unbelievable contrivances per square inch of Changing Lanes than there are cars on F.D.R. Drive (where the movie’s plot is set […]

Chicago

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Yes, it’s big and clever and inventive. First-time theatrical feature director Rob Marshall (who helmed the TV version of Annie) and screenwriter Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters) have done a splendid job of transferring a stage show to the screen — brilliantly preserving its theatricality without ever making the proceedings seem stagey. I admit: I […]

City By The Sea

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Not too long ago someone asked me who I thought was the better actor, Robert DeNiro or Al Pacino. My immediate response was to name DeNiro, but with City by the Sea coming on the heels of Showtime contrasted with Pacino’s recent work in Insomnia and Simone, I think the balance of power is shifting, […]

City Of God

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Despite its almost impossibly glowing reputation, I have to say I approached City of God (Cidade de Deus) with serious trepidation. I expected this Brazilian import to be anything but my cup of Lapsang Souchong — no matter how worthy the film might be. I don’t know if calling something as visceral, unpleasant and disturbing […]

Clockstoppers

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If I was a 12-to-15-year-old boy, I’d probably love Clockstoppers, but if I was a 12-to-15-year-old boy, I’d probably think I was too cool to go see Clockstoppers (the Nickelodeon imprint alone would assure that). That’s the curse of a movie like this: It’s merely passable entertainment to an adult (think after-school special with better […]

Collateral Damage

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When Der Arnold’s character — the improbably named Gordon Brewer — loses his passport in Collateral Damage, someone did him the favor of shaving a couple of years off his age for the insert shot of the document. Too bad, it never occurred to anyone in the make-up department to do him a similar favor. […]

Comedian

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First a confession: I have never seen an episode of Seinfeld, so the name of Jerry Seinfeld holds no sacred magic for me. I have only the vaguest memories of ever having seen him during his years as a standup comic. In other words, my exposure to him via this cinema verite documentary was an […]

Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind

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According to TV producer Chuck Barris — the man who foisted The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game and The Gong Show on a distressingly willing American public — there was more to his life than met the eye. Granted, it would be hard to imagine that there could be less than met the eye. It’s […]

Crocodile Dundee In Los Angeles

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Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles –an unashamedly old-fashioned and surprisingly entertaining comedy-thriller from Paul Hogan — is by no means a great movie, but neither is it the unqualified disaster it might so easily have been. Though Hogan’s non-Crocodile Dundee career has been less than spectacular, you have to give the guy credit for being […]

Crossroads

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If Paramount is in dire need of a break-out quote for Britney Spears’ combined feature-film debut and big-screen product-placement campaign (bored viewers can distract themselves by counting the number of times Clairol Herbal Essence and Pepsi products find their way into the frame), I offer them this: “It’s better than Glitter!” Beyond that I’m not […]

Crush

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Into this dismal movie year comes the charming and more-deep-than-it-appears film from first time writer-director John McKay, Crush. It’s the first 2002 release that captivated me from start to finish — the first to achieve the badge of honor for any title in the modern era: the knowledge that I will buy the DVD of […]

Daredevil

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Probably the nicest thing I can think to say about Daredevil is that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. It generally held my interest. The dubiously cast Ben Affleck didn’t disgrace himself. A lot of the film is nice to look at in a kind of elaborate music-video fashion. […]

Darkness Falls

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Darkness Falls? And well it should. The first new horror film of the new year is the sort of unmitigated donkey crap that makes even a hardcore horror fan like myself understand why the genre is held in such disdain by non-fans. It probably didn’t help that I saw this atrocity within a half hour […]

Death To Smoochy

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Any movie with a main character who spends several moments expounding on the parallels between Captain Kangaroo and Jesus Christ clearly isn’t afraid to take risks. And Danny DeVito’s Death to Smoochy — the blackest, nastiest, most over the top black comedy to come along in ages — is full of such risks. It’s most […]

Deliver Us From Eva

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Yet another in the seemingly endless stream of romantic comedies flooding movie screens of late, Deliver Us From Eva is nowhere near as good as Two Weeks Notice or as bad as A Guy Thing. It’s more or less on the level of Maid in Manhattan, even sharing that film’s central flaw in that it […]

Die Another Day

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Yep, it has all the emotional depth of 007’s martini glass. There are bone-jarring, teeth-rattling Dolby Digital Surround Sound explosions of various sizes on the average of every three minutes. There’s a dreadful Madonna theme song upon which Bond ought to use his license to kill. The dialogue bristles with bad puns (“Mr. Kil? Now […]

Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood

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Yes, it’s uneven. Yes, it’s fragmented (although that doesn’t always work against it). Yes, it boasts a “conclusion” that would embarrass a first-year psych student. But Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is also one of the more adventurous exercises in filmmaking to come out of mainstream Hollywood (it’s still essentially a Hollywood production, even […]