School of Rock is both better and worse than I expected. Any movie by the maker of Wanking … er, Waking Life that didn’t send me heading for the exit the minute of the final fade-out is pretty remarkable. And maybe that’s due to director Richard Linklater and screenwriter/actor Mike White (The Good Girl) having […]
The fact that I can walk into a multiplex in 2003 and see a movie with plain white-on-black titles backed by Billie Holiday’s recording of Cole Porter’s “Easy to Love” is heartening. That such a film should include exchanges about preferring to listen to Holiday on vinyl because CDs sound “too sterile,” and boasts casual […]
Open note to director Mike Figgis: Stick with what you know. To the movie-going public at large, Figgis is probably best known for Leaving Las Vegas. Otherwise, his name is mostly associated with artsy, independent projects that few people have ever seen — and none of which offers any suggestion that the filmmaker was the […]
The library concludes its Movie Madness series with the debut feature of Guillermo Del Toro — which ranks as possibly his best film. Even more than his subsequent and ultimately too horrifically tepid The Devil’s Backbone, Del Toro gives us in Cronos a horror film that Luis Bunuel might have made, had Bunuel made horror […]
Cinema in the Park goes out this year with not only a bang, but a shudder. F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu is the granddaddy of all vampire films — but don’t let that antique appellation throw you, because 81 years after its release, it remains one of most singularly creepy and enthralling movies ever made in any […]
I discovered not long ago that you could pull up profiles of RottenTomatoes.com reviewers and see samples of each has rated as best and worst, and through a process of mystical divination or mathematics, the percentage of times a critic is in accord with his fellow reviewers on the “Tomatometer.” On average, I agree with […]
The only consistent thing about this strange hybrid is its relentless blue-gray color scheme. If you’ve seen the trailer, then you’ve seen the look of the entire film — which, for all intents and purposes, might have been shot in black and white. Otherwise, Underworld is an inexpressibly silly creation that exists somewhere in the […]
I don’t quite know what I expected when I settled in to watch this first quasi-narrative film from husband-wife documentary team Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. I knew I was slightly apprehensive — and even a little resentful — at the thought of being subjected to yet another smug, post-modernist essay delineating the quirks, […]
While Cabin Fever is entertaining schlock in its own right, it’s certainly nothing new under the sun. Thus, it raises the question of what happens when horror films are viewed by people who don’t necessarily go in for the genre. Watching Cabin Fever unspool, that question seemed to be answered in the generally positive festival […]
What a mind-bogglingly strange road has been traveled by director Bob Rafelson. There were those early days helming episodes of The Monkees, followed by the world acclaim for his Five Easy Pieces and the popularity of a smattering of later movies. And now this misbegotten Rafelson mess is being thrust upon us by Mac Releasing, […]
You don’t go to Robert Rodriguez movies for thoughtful narratives. About the deepest Rodriguez has ever gotten was his examination and redefinition of family in Spy Kids, or his posing the idea in Spy Kids II that maybe God no longer shows himself because he’s afraid of us. No, you go to a Rodriguez picture […]
John Frankenheimer was one of the more prestigious directors of the 1960s, but his work is rarely revived today, and he generally didn’t have the greatest of luck with movies depicting the fantastic. His later forays into that arena — Prophecy and The Island of Dr. Moreau — were hardly successful on any level. However, […]
“Under a Vienna Moon — Over a Vienna Bakery.” That’s the title that both starts this undeservedly obscure, sophisticated comedy gem from director Lewis Milestone, and sets its tone. The Garden of Eden, dating to 1928, is what’s known as a sophisticated (back when that meant something) romantic comedy — the kind where the romance […]
I put movies into one of four categories: those I disliked and never want to see again; those I liked, but have no real desire to see again; those I liked and will want to revisit sometime; and those I will be in the store to buy on DVD the day they come out. Since […]
It was once called The Sin Eater, though owing to cast and filmmaker, you might be hoping The Order would qualify as A Priest’s Tale. And yet if there was any truth in advertising, they’d have changed the title to The Ordeal, because that accurately describes sitting through this film. After the first five minutes […]
I confess that I am not a huge fan of musical theater, despite the fact that the musical film done right is probably my favorite genre. I own very few Broadway shows on CD (or LP, for that matter), though I admit to having the “original Broadway cast” 78s for both Oklahoma! and Kiss Me […]
Jeepers Creepers 2 is probably the most interesting not-all-that-good movie to come along in a while. JC2 works fairly well as a simple horror flick. There’s no denying that the Creeper (Jonathan Breck) is a darn sight … er … creepier than he was in the first film, which pretty much fell apart as soon […]
Many, many years ago, the great filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch remarked, “I’ve been to Paris, France, and I’ve been to Paris, Paramount. On the whole, I prefer Paris, Paramount.” The new Merchant-Ivory production Le Divorce brings home the truth of Lubitsch’s statement with all the force of a sledgehammer. This is indeed the sort of movie […]
Here’s a rare chance: Asheville Pizza and Brewing has booked 1954 horror classic The Creature From the Black Lagoon — yes, it’s in 3-D, too — for a solid week starting this Friday. Whether you consider the Creature series a death-rattle coda to Universal Pictures’ claim to the title of “The Home of Horror,” or […]
I’ve loved actor Richard Benjamin ever since I first saw him as Dick Hollister opposite real-life wife Paula Prentiss in the 1967 TV show He & She, an undervalued comedic gem that paved the way for the much more famous Mary Tyler Moore Show. Benjamin not only starred in the sitcom, but he was also […]
Publicists in search of a usable break-out quote for this film are welcome to this: My Boss’s Daughter doesn’t suck nearly as much as I thought it would. Alas, judging by the fact that the film appears to be doing the same kind of non-business as last week’s Grind (a movie jealous of the box-office […]
