A great many of my critical brethren have praised this theatrical-feature directorial debut by Tommy Lee Jones for its gritty realism. Such acclaim may well be apt, but I suspect that what they really mean is that Jones’ film looks like what they’ve come to accept as gritty realism by way of John Ford, Howard […]
I’ll come right to the point: See this movie. Yes, Transamerica is the debut feature from writer-director Duncan Tucker. And yes, that means that this film tries very hard to impress you and get you to like it, and has a couple of missteps along the way as a result. But that doesn’t keep it […]
Seeing Cavalcade for the first time since I was in high school, I was immediately struck that this best-picture Oscar winner from 1933 is a testament to the unkindness of time. Almost no one remembers the film today. Its director, Frank Lloyd (who also won the Oscar), was a big noise in his day, his […]
It’s a little faux-ingenuous to blast Doogal for taking a British picture called The Magic Roundabout and replacing its soundtrack with a thoroughly Americanized one, since the popular Brit TV show on which this film is based was a French opus that was bought up by the BBC and dubbed into English. However, it’s not […]
This film festival award-winner from first-time feature filmmaker Rudolf Mestdagh is quite a remarkable work. Despite its title, it has no relation to the similarly named comic book, nor to Mr. Strauss’ opera (though the film does reference Sophocles at one point). Rather, it’s a multi-storied tale done in an audaciously fragmented style that will […]
Walking out of the Martin Lawrence atrocity Big Momma’s House 2 a few weeks ago, I was interested to hear a number of people not discussing the film at hand, but talking excitedly about the looming prospect of Madea’s Family Reunion. It appears that movies featuring black men in fat-suit drag, dispensing a combination of […]
Watching director Satyajit Ray’s 1955 debut, Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road), seems less like viewing a film than like spending two hours in another life in another world — unless, of course, you grew up in a poor village in Bengal in the 1920s, which probably precludes most readers. At the same time, […]
Warning: Wayne Kramer’s new film, Running Scared, is every bit as over-the-top and violent as you may have heard, and if such things bother you, then this is not the movie for you. For that matter, you might be well advised to look for entertainment elsewhere if you’re in the market for anything approaching a […]
This frequently on-target and often very funny film would have been better if it was half as hip as it thinks it is. As it stands, Anarchy TV is still a pretty good indie film — especially if judged on a sliding scale, which is almost essential when dealing with low-budget efforts of this kind. […]
Sample humor in Date Movie: Two hobbits and a wizard walk into a jewelry store. One hobbit asks the clerk how much she’ll give him for a certain ring in his possession. She offers him 50 bucks and he grudgingly takes it while the wizard bemoans the fate of mankind over this transaction. The hobbit […]
If you ranked movies solely on ambition, Joe Roth’s Freedomland would get an A. Oh, it’s ambitious. I don’t know when I last saw a movie try to do so much — or get so tangled up and keep tripping over its own feet. It would have helped if screenwriter Richard Price (adapting his own […]
It’s 90 years old and there’s still nothing quite like D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance. Oh, sure, there have been other multi-storied films that intersect to play on a constant theme: P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia is probably the most successful, with Paul Haggis’ Crash and Steven Gaghan’s Syriana the most recent. But these all differ in that their […]
At first glance, first-time filmmaker Jeff Barrie’s documentary Killowatt Ours looks like more of the same. You know, more of the same well-meaning, conservation-conscious, finger-wagging stuff that you’ve been seeing for years. The sort of film that likes to lecture you about how you are the problem and how you aren’t doing your bit. That […]
The most critically damned of all Ingmar Bergman films, the legendary director’s only English-language work is by now ripe for rediscovery and reappraisal as an intensely personal work unlike anything else in his filmography. The background of The Serpent’s Egg helps put it into perspective. Claiming he was being persecuted by Swedish income-tax authorities, Bergman […]
The White Countess is the final film from the partnership, both professional and personal, of director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant (who died last year). The new film marks something of a return to form after their disastrous Le Divorce and tepid The Golden Bowl. In fact, this is probably the most satisfyingly realized […]
Reviewed Feb 15, 2006 Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s first feature caused quite a ripple of interest at the time of its release in 2001. It seemed to announce the arrival of a fresh voice on the filmmaking scene — not to mention that of a young actor named Gael Garcia Bernal, who would leap to much […]
If you’ve seen either of the two previous Final Destination movies, then you have a pretty good idea what you’ll be getting into if you go see this one. The concept is the same in each case. A group of movie teens (read: a bunch of people you’ve never heard of somewhere between the ages […]
If this movie does nothing else, it should settle the question of whether Harrison Ford ought to do a fourth and final Indiana Jones picture. The answer is no. The prospect of seeing Ford at this stage of his life as an all-out action hero is not a pleasing one, since his — blessedly limited […]
Good Morning, Babylon presents a charming idea for a film that somehow never quite achieves its promise, despite the 1987 film itself being constantly watchable and interesting, sometimes even fascinating. The idea is brilliant: Two Italian artisans, Nicola (Vincent Spano) and Andrea Bonnano (Joaquim de Almeida), come to America in 1915 seeking their fortunes, which […]
Woody Allen’s latest has garnered him some of his best reviews in years — and I’m still pondering why. To some degree, I think it’s a case of heaping undeserved praise on a filmmaker for no other reason than that he’s done something that at least offers the illusion of being different. I certainly see […]
As part of Kindness Week, this little 25-minute documentary is scheduled for three showings at the Fine Arts. An admirably straightforward documentary, the film details the — amazingly successful — efforts of 7-year-old Ryan Hreljac of Kemptville, Ontario, to have a well built in Uganda. Ryan at first mistakenly thought that he could get the […]
