There was a time not that long ago when any list of great filmmakers would have included Jean Renoir and any list of great films would have included Grand Illusion (1937). But fashions in film and filmmakers change. Still, Robert Altman’s Gosford Park (2001) was a thinly veiled hommage to Renoir’s The Rules of the […]
Can anyone think of Imelda Marcos and not fixate on her formidable shoe collection (between 1,200 and 3,600 pairs)? This potentially risible subject becomes the perfect subject for one of the most engaging, entertaining and outrageous documentaries of recent memory — all done with the participation of Imelda Marcos herself. While the film (2003) is […]
The marquee in front of the Fine Arts Theatre in downtown Asheville claimed that Peaceful Warrior would be “life changing,” so believing in the concept of truth in advertising, I walked in and announced to the folks there that I had come to have my life changed — and that if this did not happen […]
The existence of movies like Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is, I believe, the reason that intelligent life from other planets seem to prefer not visiting here. (I can only conclude, however, that no aliens have seen a Wayans Brothers picture, since the Earth has not been reduced to a cinder.) There is […]
The Descent is this year’s (or maybe this season’s) “new face of horror” candidate. As near as I can determine, this whole “new face of horror” started in 1987 when Stephen King raved about Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. And that was a pretty good movie — at least so far as movies about haunted Rubik’s cubes […]
If he’s remembered at all today, James Clavell is primarily thought of as a novelist (most especially Shogun), with a few people perhaps remembering his screenwriting on films as diverse as The Fly (1958) and The Great Escape (1963) — but he also made a few movies. The most famous (perhaps because of the theme […]
This Richard Linklater film version of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly uses the same rotoscope technique the director employed for his Wanking … excuse me, Waking Life in 2001. The results this time are better in that there’s at least a story, but the film overall is clearly a product of […]
What on earth is the director who would soon be one of the major architects of the James Bond series doing making a ballet film? Terence Young not only helmed the first Bond picture, Dr. No (1962), he helped develop it, and went on to make From Russia With Love (1964) and Thunderball (1965), not […]
Hot from the phenomenal success of Batman, filmmaker Tim Burton turned his attention to his first fully-formed personal film, Edward Scissorhands — the fantastic tale of an artificially-created young man (Johnny Depp), whose creator (Vincent Price) dies before he can replace the scissors that serve as makeshift hands with more traditional ones. The film not […]
I can’t imagine that anyone really wants to relive the days of the Miami Vice TV series, but assuming that someone does, I can’t think they’re likely to be satisfied with Michael Mann’s big screen version of the show he once worked on as executive producer. If you’re looking for flamingoes, art deco architecture, pastel […]
The most captivating, congenial and consistently charming film of the year — well, along with Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion — Woody Allen’s Scoop marks a return to form for the filmmaker. It also marks a similar return for Allen’s detractors, who have come out in force to kvetch that it’s not like his […]
Thoroughly unnecessary, extremely loud and occasionally mildly distasteful, there’s really not much that can be said about The Ant Bully except to note that it’s yet another in the seemingly unending series of computer animated films that are flooding theaters these days. At the end of the day, it’s not a lot more than the […]
Costa-Gavras’ Z (1969) was undoubtedly the first overtly political film I ever saw, and I’m sure that at the age of 15 I actually understood very little of it. (Hell, I was just proud of the fact that I got the joke when the general responded to the question as to whether he considered himself […]
The Twelve Chairs — based on a 1928 Russian novel — had seen service quite a few times when Mel Brooks made his version of it in 1970, the most famous being the 1945 Fred Allen film It’s in the Bag. Oddly, the Brooks version is a lot tamer than the Fred Allen version (one […]
A strange and often compelling film of the magical realism school in which elements of the fantastic, magical and/or supernatural occur as a matter of course in an otherwise realistic setting, Bedtime Fairy Tales for Crocodiles tells the story of the curse of the Juarez family through 100-plus years of Mexican history. Arcangel Juarez (Arturo […]
Supposedly Clerks II garnered an eight-minute standing ovation at Cannes. (Look at your watch for eight minutes and tell me you believe that.) However, it so offended critic Joel Siegel that he walked out of a screening — loudly proclaiming his departure, earning the even more vocal wrath of writer-director Kevin Smith. (Smith forgets this […]
By the time the Monkees made Head in 1968, they had nothing to lose and they knew it — and they took advantage of it to make one of the most irreverent, subversive and downright peculiar films of the ’60s. Lacking anything that can even charitably be called a plot, it’s every inch a “head” […]
Having been burned in 2002 by the smoke and mirrors of M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs — a film I gave a high rating, then thought about for a week and wondered if I could plead temporary insanity — I am very reluctant to lavish praise on his Lady in the Water. Will I hate myself […]
The question with My Super Ex-Girlfriend isn’t so much whether or not director Ivan Reitman has lost his touch as it is whether or not he ever had a touch to lose. Reitman became a hot director thanks to a pair of utterly disposable star vehicles, Meatballs (1979) and Stripes (1981), which became hits thanks […]
This oddity from famed filmmaker Fritz Lang was a one-shot affair made in France between his departure from Germany and his career in Hollywood. For years, the film only seemed to exist in a cut and non-subtitled version that was often mistakenly assumed to be the French language version of the almost never seen 1930 […]
When the trailer for this movie first appeared, my comrade-in-reviewing, Marcianne Miller, was quick to send me an e-mail reading, “Don’t you even think of assigning me Little Man.” This is known as a pre-emptive strike — and a wise move it was. No, Little Man isn’t the worst movie of the summer. That’s too […]
