Apparently I’m supposed to dislike this aggressively pompous and unrelentingly silly movie a lot more than I did. And, come to think of it, maybe I really should. But I’m perhaps cutting The Chronicles of Riddick some slack because I liked it so much more than I did the last three Vin Diesel offerings foisted […]
No, The Stepford Wives is not a great film — but in all honesty, neither was Bryan Forbes’ 1975 version of the Ira Levin novel. And, despite the fact that this adaptation is one of the most obviously flawed movies to be given a major release in living memory, I honestly think I prefer director […]
I went into Bon Voyage knowing nothing about director/co-writer Jean-Paul Rappeneau, so I had no idea what to expect of his movie. When I came out, my primary thought was that this was an often-fascinating, always-clever film made in a style that went out of vogue about 40 years ago. Thus it came as no […]
Anyone expecting a Harry Potter movie from the maker of Y Tu Mama Tambien to be in the same key as the ones by Chris Columbus is in for a shock with this latest — and, as far as I’m concerned, greatest — entry in the franchise. No, the new film is not an overtly […]
This is the movie that put the Coen Brothers on the map, expanding their popularity far beyond the cult level of their first effort, Blood Simple. As such, Raising Arizona is certainly of interest as an early document of two of the most intriguing filmmakers working today. As a stand-alone film, however, I’m sticking to […]
There’s one thing to be said for The Day After Tomorrow: It’s a whole lot funnier than Soul Plane, a movie that consistently mistakes tastelessness for bad taste. As director John Waters pointed out years ago, you actually have to have taste in order to produce something that’s in bad taste. The makers of Soul […]
Disaster movies have to be given some slack in the realism department. Consider the sterling example of the 1969 classic for the geographically challenged, Krakatoa: East of Java, where no one involved noticed that Krakatoa was, in fact, west of Java. At least the makers of The Day After Tomorrow are aware that New York […]
If you liked the original Shrek, I can’t imagine you won’t like this one — and perhaps even more so than the first. Shrek 2 is that rarest of rarities: the sequel that lives up to and in some ways even surpasses the parent film. It’s not unheard of: Bride of Frankenstein and X 2 […]
Yes, The Fourth World War is deliberately inflammatory and often a little bit unfocused in approach, but it’s also one of the most courageously outspoken and creatively made documentaries I’ve seen in a while. As I’ve said before, I don’t think it incumbent of the documentary form to present an unbiased point of view. Indeed, […]
Will somebody please get Gabrielle Union a good movie? She deserves something more than this kind of recycled junk that has her get all a-dither over Jamie Foxx’s character just because he says she looks like Halle Berry. It’s hard to imagine Union feeling the need for that sort of validation. Then again, just about […]
Personally, I find Mary Pickford a little frightening, and I find the idea of the 33-year-old actress playing a girl about 20 years her junior even more alarming. Still, I can’t say that Little Annie Rooney — either despite or because of these things — didn’t finally win me over as a charmingly old-fashioned entertainment. […]
I freely and unapologetically admit that I am not a fan of sword-and-sandals movies, and have never quite gotten their appeal beyond the beefcake level. They tend to bore me after a very short time, and their tendency toward irredeemably bad dialogue loses its amusement value in an even shorter one. So you might want […]
As a horror-movie geek, I’m supposed to hate Van Helsing and call it travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham as concerns its desecration of the 1930s horror films from Universal. And, truth to tell, were I to hold it up against those […]
I suspect that I never warmed to the charms of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory because I was about 16 years old when it made its cinematic bow. I was far too “adult” and cynical to care much about a “kid’s movie”; thus, it’s not a part of my childhood — and seeing it […]
With this and Hildago, Omar Sharif reclaims his place as a major star of film — albeit one somewhat removed from his more dashing days in Larwrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. That’s not to say that Mr. Sharif isn’t still rather dashing in a 70-plus sort of way, but he makes no attempt to […]
In what possible alternate universe could we really find an Olsen twin (I think it’s Mary-Kate, but it hardly matters) playing drums on a recording of “Suffragette City?” That’s not only just wrong, but there’s something a little creepy about either of these scrubbed-so-clean-they-squeak bastions of underage wholesomeness being involved in covering a David Bowie […]
Taking my life — or at least my reputation as a serious film scholar — in my hands, I’m going to admit that D.W. Griffith is high on my list of least-favorite directors. He was certainly a pioneer in filmmaking in that, at the time of his greatest successes, he used a lot of now-standard […]
I won’t deny for a moment that the game of golf requires tremendous skill. Why, I’ve certainly had my own share of trouble through the years getting that little ball through the blades on those windmills! What golf is not, however, is the most cinematically exciting of sports. And the few attempts at making it […]
College is all but unknown in Buster Keaton’s filmography. And while it was made fairly quickly and cheaply, I still don’t know if I’d call it a minor work, however modest it is in comparison to Keaton’s more elaborate — and even spectacular — films. As such, College gives us Keaton working without the benefit […]
I don’t require horror films to be terribly realistic. I figure the basic fantastic nature of the genre cuts its films some slack. For that matter, some horror films can get by — or at least attain a level of interest — on style alone (I’m one of maybe six people who kind of liked […]
I didn’t hate Laws of Attraction; I did, however, like it better in its 36 or so earlier incarnations. This film is essentially a harmless, bland confection that just manages to squeak by on the basis of a few clever lines and the appeal of its stars. At least, I think it’s harmless: I have […]
