If we exempt him stepping in to finish Fierce Creatures, Fred Schepisi hasn’t made a movie since 1994’s I.Q., and hasn’t made one nearly as good as Last Orders since 1993’s Six Degrees of Separation. Schepisi’s an uneven filmmaker: For every Six Degrees of Separation, or even a classy spy thriller like The Russia House, […]
Well, what do you expect from a director whose only other credential is a short film bearing the title Titsiana Booberini? (Like I could make that up if I tried?) Here’s yet another drop down the mineshaft of modern film comedy. The title says it all and then some, but the filmmakers seemed to think […]
Stephen Frears hasn’t made a film this good in ages — maybe not since 1987’s Sammy and Rosie Get Laid and certainly not since 1993’s The Snapper. In fact, in recent years it’s seemed as if much that was so good about Frears’ mid-80s work was his fortuitous teaming with writer Hanif Kureishi on My […]
It’s an unabashed — and not wholly successful — full-scale assault on the tear-ducts. It aims for the three-handkerchief realm (you didn’t really think I was going to say “three hankie,” did you?), but never gets much beyond one and a half — two if you’re charitable. And what emotional resonance it has is mostly […]
Since Life or Something Like It was directed by Stephen Herek, who gave us such gems as Rock Star and The Mighty Ducks, and written by John Scott Shepherd, whose only prior offense was the Tim Allen “feel-good” comedy Joe Somebody, saying that the film represents the best of either man’s work is hardly an […]
It plays and feels like an old Warner Bros.’ Merrie Melody or Looney Toons offering to such a degree that it’s hard not to suspect that something like Invasion of the Body Snatchers must have taken place at the Disney studio. Despite the fact that co-writer, co-director Chris Sanders (who also gives voice to Stitch) […]
It’s every bit as good as you’ve heard and actually justifies all the hype surrounding it, which is nothing short of amazing. Is it the best film of the year? No, probably not. I can think of at least four films this year that surpass Lord of the Rings. Is it better than Harry Potter? […]
First-time director Janusz Kaminski (a former cinematographer best known for being married to Holly Hunter, who was smart enough to stay out of this movie) makes his bid for the Son o’ Satan Sweepstakes with Lost Souls. The results are so derivative that the film should have been titled Satanism by the Number — a […]
According to the press kit, Love and Sex (which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival) is writer/director Valerie Breiman’s first “official” feature film — an understandable claim when one’s last directorial credit is called Bikini Squad. And despite the generally negative reviews Love and Sex has received, it’s a lot better than anyone has a […]
I can’t help but pity the timing of Nicole Holofcener’s Lovely and Amazing, arriving on the heels of such other populous character studies as Thirteen Conversations About One Thing and Full Frontal. It’s easily as good as the former, better than the latter, and more quirkily honest than both. Unlike Thirteen Conversations, Lovely and Amazing […]
Fast, fresh, funny and brash, writer-director-actor Jon Favreau’s (who wrote and starred in Swingers, with co-star/co-producer Vince Vaughn) Made is the rough-edged winner of the last gasp of summer movies. In tone and somewhat in plot, Made is a kind of simplified and Americanized Snatch — the sort of movie that Sexy Beast wanted to […]
Offbeat filmmaker Wayne Wang’s films (Chan Is Missing, Smoke, The Center of the World, et al) have always tended to be somewhat outside the mainstream. When Wang is paired with teen-comedy Brat Pack maestro John Hughes (The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Home Alone), the pair make for even stranger bedfellows than the rich Republican senatorial […]
The new film from the director of the highly acclaimed and immensely popular Cinema Paradiso has been described by some as Cinema Paradiso meets Summer of ’42, and while there is some justification for that glib assessment, Malena is a good bit more intelligent than that suggests. True, Tornatore (whose best film is probably the […]
I went through nearly my entire list of victims … er, friends … in an attempt to find anyone who would slog through Malibu’s Most Wanted with me before finding a sufficiently sympathetic (or masochistic) soul. I am only surprised that he’s still speaking to me. After all, one person who accompanied me to 8 […]
I have to admit up front that I walked out of Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat. I did go back and check out the last 10 minutes, but these were, if anything, more repulsive than the first 30 or 40 minutes. And I have to admit that I have never found Lawrence funny or talented or […]
Memento is either one of the most intensely brilliant, densely textured films ever made, or it’s a supremely clever con-job by a filmmaker high on the mere concept of screwing around with the viewer’s mind to no real purpose — except that he can. At the moment, I lean more toward the former view, even […]
It’s the old Law of Diminishing Returns with a vengeance — sequelitis in its most extreme form. It’s not so much that Barry Sonnenfeld’s extension of his 1997 hit (delayed these many years whilst Messrs. Jones and Smith hammered out the most lucrative possible deals for themselves) is bad. It’s something worse than bad: It’s […]
Having made the nor’ by nor’west “collaboration” with Stanley Kubrick of A.I., Steven Spielberg seems to have decided that he is Kubrick. (A character named Burgess and eye-clamps applied to Tom Cruise are obvious references to A Clockwork Orange.) The simple fact is that he’s not Kubrick — a truth he evidences again and again […]
The trailer for Monkeybone does the film a grave disservice by making it look like an utterly tasteless, one-joke, leering, “hubba-hubba” comedy of the most vulgar kind. (The trailer also suggests much post-production tampering, since one pivotal scene in the film is entirely different from what we see in the trailer.) And, yes, Monkeybone is […]
Filled with color, lively characters, clever situations and music, Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding is a joyous little film that’s actually considerably deeper and more substantial than it appears on the surface. It’s been compared to the old Spencer Tracy-Elizabeth Taylor vehicle, Father of the Bride, but in reality it has far more in common with […]
Intense in a way that In the Bedroom only wishes it was, Marc Forster’s Monster’s Ball (the title taken from an old English term for a condemned man’s last night) is far and away the most powerful movie in town right now — and very likely the best. The simplistic assessment of the movie as […]
