The film that answers the question: “Just how does a film get rated PG for ‘bodily humor’?” is here. And while I’m willing to bet that any savvy moviegoer has at least a clue as to the meaning of the phrase “bodily humor” (after all, comedies have never been quite the same since the campfire […]
Where are Frankie and Annette when you need them? Out Cold, the new “comedy” from Touchstone, is like nothing so much as a beach party picture with snow substituting for surf and smarm standing in for charm. Granted, the beach party movies were never anything to get excited about. They seemed out of touch and […]
Intermittently effective, improbable and finally unbelievable, David Fincher’s Panic Room is a tidy 30-minute idea encased in 100 minutes of movie. If you’ve seen the trailer, you know what the premise is. In fact, if you’ve seen the trailer, you pretty much know everything about the film except what’s hidden in the titular room — […]
In Pearl Harbor a lot of things blow up real neat, but is it history? Considering that one review I’ve read makes the astonishing claim that Pearl Harbor took place on December 7, 1942, maybe that doesn’t matter. And it really doesn’t matter what I say about this movie. This isn’t a movie, it’s a […]
An uneven film version of Rebecca Miller’s book of the same name — it sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t, but it never really engages the viewer on a very deep level. And it’s an absolute monument to the Curse of Independent Filmmaking; Personal Velocity is the sort of movie (of which there are far too […]
Admitting to liking a movie directed by Joel Schumacher is like peeling the skin off my face, yet I have to confess that I had a very good time at Phone Booth. The film is as nicely nasty a little suspenser as could be imagined. Little of its quality, alas, has much to do with […]
This movie is so cosmically God-awful that when they finally catch Osama bin Laden, they’re going to make him sit through it — twice. Sure, Pinnochio looked bad from the trailers, but nothing — nothing — can prepare you for the sheer sick-making tedium, the jaw-dropping badness and the downright creepiness of Roberto Benigni’s bloated […]
An intense and intensely intelligent film in the film-noir mold, Place Vendome is a work so multi-layered in its meanings and so complex in its story structure that it is just as apt to alienate its audience as it is to fascinate them. It isn’t that the plot itself is terribly complex — with his […]
The good news is that Tim Burton has finally made a movie that is completely accessible to all audiences. That’s also the bad news. The usual gripes about Burton’s lack of story sense are not likely to be brought to bear on Planet of the Apes, which is admirably linear in construction. It’s a Tim […]
“If people would leave most of their stuff at home and just look at the paintings, I don’t think they’d have any trouble enjoying them. It’s like looking at a bed of flowers — you don’t tear your hair out over what it means.” So says Ed Harris as Jackson Pollock in his film, Pollock, […]
Sweet Merciful King of Glory! What the hell is this witless mess? According to the press kit, it’s a spin-off from a skit that was part of HBO’s The Chris Rock Show, which sounds all too plausible, since this jaw-dropper of unbelievable unfunniness plays like the beached whale (even if it is only around the […]
At last — a truly great film emerges from the summer of 2002, and about damn time! Yes, there have been some very good films this summer — topping the list are Lilo Stitch and The Emperor’s New Clothes — but they’ve been sparse. This brilliant film by Neil LaBute shoots to the head of […]
It’s shorter than the standard Paul Thomas Anderson movie, and seems slighter. But is it really? I don’t think so. In fact, Punch-Drunk Love may be the deepest film Anderson has made. But lacking the faux weightiness of an inflated running time, working within the formula of a romantic comedy and featuring a popular (but […]
Last year. the movies gave us one exceptional horror film, The Others; one extremely good horror film, From Hell; and one near-miss, Jeepers Creepers (let’s just leave such things as Soul Survivors and Bones out of this). And this year … well, our first such entry, Queen of the Damned, is nearer the level of […]
Philip Kaufman is a filmmaker whose intentions almost always seem greater than his abilities (The Right Stuff, Henry and June, The Unbearable Lightness of Being), so it’s a pleasure to report that intentions and ability have found even footing in Quills — one of the most fascinating and literate films to come along in some […]
It’s more than a little shocking to learn that the harsh practices outlined in Philip Noyce’s Rabbit-Proof Fence, set in 1931, were still being used in Australia as recently as 1970. Indeed, it’s an outrage. At the heart of Noyce’s film is the practice of removing half-caste children from their Aborigine mothers and placing them […]
A Sean McNamara film? Yes, that’s what it says on the posters and on the film itself. And who, pray, is Sean McNamara? Well, according to the Internet Movie Data Base, he’s a filmmaker who has been making movies in a similar key to this one for some considerable time. It’s just that previously, none […]
Since novelist Thomas Harris hasn’t seen fit to continue the Hannibal Lecter story, the studios — ever mindful of milking the cash cow to the last drop — opted to go back to Harris’ second novel, Red Dragon, in order to cook up another Hannibal stew, despite the fact that the book was already filmed […]
Likable leading players, brisk pacing and gorgeous wide-screen cinematography by Peter Suschitzky (Mars Attacks!) aren’t nearly enough to overcome cardboard characters, a trite plot, inane dialogue (no less than three speeches by people wanting to be left to die for the good of the others and/or mankind in general) and a typically dismal computer-generated “monster” […]
Way too much draggin’ and not nearly enough dragon, this overly serious talkathon is the perfect cure for insomnia, but little else. As a barometer of its cosmic dismalness, I saw it with a friend who hadn’t quite forgiven me for making him sit through Jason X. As soon as the film hit its jaw-droppingly […]
As someone who never made it all the way through the original, most basic video game Sonic the Hedgehog, I’m not in the best position to comment on just how successfully the film version of Resident Evil captures its source video game. As someone who has sampled all manner of cinematic cheese, however, I’d give […]
