Half Past Dead is full-out stupid. It’s so brainless, however — and full of enough action to cauterize your eyeballs — that it manages to be a good Friday-night veg-out flick. Steven Seagal (Under Siege) is Sascha, a Russian-born FBI mole who goes undercover in a futuristic — and nasty — Alcatraz prison. His mission […]
Invited to write a movie review for Ashely Siegel’s Short Takes column, this Buddhist agrees to tackle the task at hand. She buys herself a bucket of popcorn and walks into the opening sequence of Hanging Up. She is assaulted by the film’s first 60 seconds, which portrays rampant games of verbal ping-pong volleyed between […]
Hardball isn’t pretty. It takes place in the ugly, mean streets of inner-city Chicago. Children live in a fatherless world where the only adult males terrorize them. Being out after dark is tantamount to suicide, since your neighbors will beat you to a pulp just to steal your book bag. At home, everyone sits on […]
The first part of Hart’s War is a good, straight-ahead World War II movie. Filming was done in and around Prague, so we are given a backdrop of the wintry skies and forests of an area near Germany. Starting with these elements, the cinematographer (Alar Kivilo) creates a rich texture, using the steely grays and […]
Holes is as rare as treasure found buried in the desert — a movie made for kids that adults can thoroughly enjoy. Thanks go partly to Andrew Davis, a dynamic director who usually applies his talents to big action flicks (such as 1993’s The Fugitive, one of my favorite movies of all time). The book’s […]
In the few days since Hollow Man has been released, I have read 643 reviews proclaiming, “Hollow Man? Hollow movie!” (or words to that effect). What is so annoying about these reviews (other than their authors’ lamentable wit) is the reviewers’ outrage at the film’s hollowness. Wake up, guys! Hollow Man’s director Paul Verhoeven, is […]
“Why did you risk your life for me?” Diego the Saber-Toothed Tiger (voice of Denis Leary) asks Manfred the Mammoth (voice of Ray Romano) as the two Ice Age adventurers lay exhausted from escaping certain death in the sea of boiling lava below. “That’s what you do in a herd,” Manfred says matter of factly, […]
Ninety seconds into Jackass: The Movie, Lonnie leaned to me. “Please tell me this doesn’t go on for two hours!” he groaned. “No, ” I whispered. “It’s only 80 minutes.” That was no consolation. A few minutes later, Lonnie marched to the exit. How humiliating — my ex-Marine husband didn’t have the guts to sit […]
“I may be small, but I have a big brain!” shouts the hero and title character of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (voiced by Debbi Derryberry). And that’s the point of the movie: Even the smallest school kid — given the brain of a genius, a motley crew of friends, a pet robot dog and the […]
You’d assume that a movie starring TV actors and directed by a veteran TV director (John Pasquin) would have its fill of pithy one-liners, a pretty predictable plot and a dearth of wide-screen vistas. Yes, Joe Somebody couldn’t completely escape its TV roots. Even so, it’s a terrific little feel-good movie — funny, touching and […]
Bible studies will never be the same after kids have feasted on Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie. It’s anarchic and anachronistic animated fun, peppered with terrific sing-a-long tunes and a spicy delight of veggie characters. With all its wholesomeness, however, Jonah gets my PGG (Parental Guidance for Girls) rating because of its shameful dearth of female […]
Just Visiting is goofy, charming, very sweet. There are beautiful chic women, and chivalric men who don’t bathe much — you guessed right: It’s French! In twelfth-century France, evil witchery causes brave Count Thibault (Jean Reno, Ronin) to hallucinate and kill his beloved bride-to-be, the beautiful Lady Rosalina (Christina Applegate, TV’s Married with Children) on […]
Everybody involved in Kangaroo Jack should be roasted on the barbie, as the Aussies say. Although the movie boasts some bonzer footage of Australia’s outback, plus a trio of farting camels, Kangaroo is a boring, brainless, bodgy waste of money. Worse, Kangaroo is the basest kind of movie rip-off–one aimed at kids. It’s possible to […]
Like Mike is supposed to be funny and sentimental, and make you want to see NBA basketball games ‘cuz the players are big, bad and sexy. It is and it does. It’s also predictable, shallow and so misogynist it should have a warning to parents. I suggest an addition to the MPAA rating code: PGG […]
Wanna feel lucky? Go see any other movie in town. Lucky Numbers is a lame story about three greedy people who try to scam the Pennsylvania state lottery. Two of the greedy people are guys, one’s a gal. But don’t think this is an equal three-way split. Perhaps because Lucky Numbers starts so well, its […]
Despite a terrible title that may doom it at the box office, Max Keeble’s Big Move is a boisterous, charming and intelligent new Disney flick. They could have called it “Revenge of the Nerd Trio” or “Animal House: Seventh Grade” or “Show-Down at O.K. Junior High.” Anything other than a title that first makes you […]
From what I can gather, teen movie reviewer Maggie West wasn’t exactly intellectually challenged by her assignment to get out there and Meet the Deedles. Furthermore, I guess that “vurping” would not be a positive response to a film geared toward amusing the young and the restless. So what we have here is a young […]
Cop Drama Narc’s unforgettable opening sequence explodes at a no-holds-barred pace that then doesn’t abate for the next 100 minutes of this mean, mesmerizing, adrenaline-charged, repulsive, violent and tragic bad-cop movie. Undercover narc Nick Tellis (Jason Patric, Incognito) chases a drug dealer through the vice-infested back streets of urban Detroit — where bullets fly, a […]
If you’re between the ages of 10 and 14 and you’re a girl, you’ll love seeing ‘NSYNC cute-boy, James Lance Bass, star as the limpid lover trying desperately to make up for being a dweeb in Eric Bross’s big screen-fanzine. Kevin is a quagmired young advertising executive whose team leader, Tamala Jones (The Brothers) in […]
All the girl really really wants — in Harald Zwart’s promising directorial debut, One Night at McCool’s — is a house of her own with customized curtains, a dinette set on the installment plan and a DVD player. Whenever Jewel Valentine (Liv Tyler) gets depressed, she looks through her precious three-ring binder of House Beautiful […]
Hollywood gets plenty of flack for promoting violence, irresponsible sex, unfettered greed and countless other anti-social behaviors. So it seems a refreshing departure, if not borderline revolutionary, to find a major Hollywood release promoting basic human kindness. That’s exactly what Pay It Forward does; to “pay something forward,” you see, is the opposite of paying […]
