Years ago, movies like this were called “women’s pictures” or “three-handkerchief weepers,” and often as not featured Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck suffering stoically for one reason or another. The current model (sometimes degradingly termed a “chick flick”) differs very little. There’s a tendency to be a little less glamorous, and of course the stars […]
It has more style per square inch than can be found in the sum total of all the films released so far in 2002. It boasts an almost perfect period evocation. It features a screenplay with dialogue that can hardly be faulted on an intelligence level. It offers no less than five dynamic performances. And […]
Rock Star scales new heights … of predictability. The film is almost consistently disappointing. There aren’t more than a handful of truly great rock ‘n’ roll movies and Rock Star doesn’t come anywhere near that select pantheon. This started life under the more apt title, Metal God and later was called So You Want to […]
Quite the most shocking thing about this out-to-shock indie is the discovery that it was shot on film, not on video. I wasn’t even aware that it was possible to make film look this amateurishly bad. The next-most-shocking thing — apart from the film’s really creepy insistence that it is basically a comedy — concerns […]
I used to think that Renny Harlin was the poor man’s John McTiernan. Now, it looks like McTiernan has turned into the unbelievably impoverished man’s Renny Harlin. Harlin has made some turkeys in his day — The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, Cliffhanger, Cutthroat Island. Indeed, when he took over the from McTiernan for the second […]
If this film was even half as funny as it thinks it is, it would be a comedy classic. The problem is that not only it isn’t, but Saving Silverman repeatedly mistakes cleverness for quality and the bizarre for the funny. Now, there’s no denying that the film is indeed clever, but much of the […]
Hands-down this is far and away the best film I have ever seen in which the hero “disguises” himself with a fake beard crafted from a collection of pubic hair culled from a bikini-wax parlor. At least Say It Isn’t So currently occupies that position, but since this sort of thing seems to be the […]
Not wishing me to tackle this weighty cinematic offering unprepared, a kind soul brought me a copy of the original laugh riot that is Scary Movie. In a sense, I’m glad, if only because I can attest to the fact that — incredible as it may seem — the egregious Scary Movie 2 actually improves […]
It’s 90-plus minutes in a live-action Hanna-Barbera hell. It’s directed by the man who gave us Home Alone 3 and Big Momma’s House. It stars Freddie PrinzeJr. with a blonde dye-job and make-up that occasionally looks like it was applied by someone who flunked out of mortician school. I’m not at all sure that anyone […]
Yep, it’s the year’s much-anticipated, much-discussed S&M romantic comedy. Is it worth the wait? And worth the discussion? Yes, and no. As a piece of writing, the movie is frequently fascinating. The acting by the two leads could not be better: James Spader handles an impossible role, bringing a depth I’d never have guessed he […]
What do Serendipty and America’s Sweethearts have in common? Both are romantic comedies and both star John Cusack. The similarities end right there. America’s Sweethearts was a jokily contrived mess that never seemed to know what it wanted to be, and was as flatly directed as a sitcom. And Serendipity? Serendipity is not only the […]
“Can an ‘ex-gay’ pacifist become a Contender?” asks the announcer of the fictional TV show, Series 7: The Contenders, that makes up the narrative of this film. It’s a question utterly typical of this fresh, funny and ultimately deeply disturbing work. Many films are touted as being “different” and even “unlike anything you’ve seen before,” […]
No, it’s not quite in the realm of the cosmically God-awful, but Serving Sara has some pretty formidable competition for that accolade at the present time. Almost anything is going to have that lesser evil relief the week after you were Blue Crushed and Pluto Nashed. On any other week, this low-octane effort at a […]
It’s very good, but Sexy Beast should have been great. It never quite is. Violent, cold-blooded, bitingly funny, deliberately quirky and boasting a script by newcomers Louis Mellis and David Scinto — replete with outrageous profanity (including a word common in British slang that tends to send some American viewers running for the exit in […]
F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent horror classic Nosferatu is the granddaddy of all vampire pictures. An unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Nosferatu was a key work in the development of the horror film and one of the few silent horror films that still manages to be utterly chilling. (Nosferatu was so unauthorized, by the way, […]
With the possible exception of the legendarily bad Pootie Tang, I don’t know when I’ve gone to review a movie — even just to see a movie — more thoroughly prepared to hate it than Shallow Hal. And I don’t believe I have ever come out of one with my preconceptions so utterly shattered by […]
It’s a little disturbing to realize that the first really good release of 2003 (late-2002 movies like About Schmidt, Chicago and The Hours, all of which only opened here after the new year, don’t count) is a goofy Jackie Chan/Owen Wilson action comedy — and a sequel no less. No, Shanghai Knights is no a […]
Forget the MGM logo that’s been tacked onto modern prints, this is the 1936 Universal film by James Whale, who’d previously made his mark on the industry with his still-celebrated quartet of horror flicks Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man and Bride of Frankenstein. For years, Whale’s version of the Show Boat stage […]
You know you’re in trouble when the best thing about a movie is William Shatner. You know you’re in even more trouble when the best things William Shatner does in the movie in question you’ve already seen in the film’s trailer. And that’s every inch the case with Showtime, a movie that sets out to […]
Much like the Big Surprise that awaits the viewer on this week’s other opener, Angel Eyes, the surprise ending of Shrek isn’t apt to startle anyone over the age of 10. There, however, all similarity between the two films ends, because Shrek is one of the season’s biggest and best delights. I was prepared to […]
It’s obvious that Edward Burns thinks he’s the Wonder Bread Woody Allen. Unfortunately, he’s more like a half-baked third-year film student who has mystifyingly been given a budget and a releasing company. The ultra-tedious Sidewalks of New York is, I suppose, Burns’ Husbands and Wives — minus real characters and much in the way of […]
