Bedazzled opens with sweeping, high-speed shots of our planet and its denizens. When the camera pauses to isolate a particular person, a yellow tag gives a capsule description of the subject (i.e., “sleepy” or “anxious” or “cheats on his taxes”). It’s a kind of cinematic shorthand, and it got me thinking what a great innovation […]
Beautiful is a girl-buddy movie disguised as a beauty-pageant send-up. You have to realize three things: First, guys will hate it. Second, it’s the directorial debut of actress Sally Field. (We applaud her for having finally made it in the Big Boys’ game at age 54. On the other hand, you gotta wonder why she’d […]
Maggie West, our 13-year-old teen reporter (who you may remember from her review of Masterminds) was given her second assignment: to review Bean, the film version of the PBS television show featuring the misadventures of one discombobulated fellow known as Mr. Bean. Below, then, is Maggie’s take on this popular British comedian’s foray into the […]
The most important three things in a movie are the ending, the ending and the ending. You can forgive a whole lot of flaws in a flick if at its conclusion you can say, “Yeah, man, ultimately, that movie was satisfying.” But when Basic ends, you just mumble, “Huh?” It starts out exciting enough. Sgt. […]
Here’s a pleasant surprise — the first such of the fall movie season. Warm, funny, and with a kind of street-smart Frank Capra “message,” Barbershop is a movie that is probably not going to do the kind of business it ought to do because of misconceptions as to what kind of movie it is. If […]
It’s as clever as they come. It has a script that manages to ultimately link together nearly every little throwaway oddity in the film in a unique and satisfying manner. It boasts the least tiresomely fussy direction of Barry Levinson’s career. It features three stars/personalities in the leads, who have never been more likable, and […]
In Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever all sorts of things blow up with alarming spectacle. In a theatre with state-of-the-art sound, this has an impressively bone-jarring impact. That is apparently it’s entire raison d’etre — if that’s what you want in a movie, it’s a rousing success. It certainly hasn’t much going for it by way […]
Separately, the names Jerry Bruckheimer and Joel Schumacher are terrifying enough. The Bruckheimer name ensures big-name stars either sleep-walking through their roles or insanely miscast (or both), an inflated budget, a lot of noisy action, a massive promotional campaign and as little thought as possible. Schumacher’s signature on a film guarantees even more pointless gloss […]
Baby Boy is a testament to John Singleton’s brilliance as a filmmaker — and his weakness as a dramatist. This film, designed as a companion piece to his Boyz N the Hood and Poetic Justice, is undeniably made by an inventive, clever, daring filmmaker. The seamless manner in which Singleton intersperses moments of fantasy into […]
I’m not a huge fan of Paul Schrader’s work … or maybe it’s his worldview that I’m not exactly in tune with. In either case, Auto Focus represents both what I admire about Schrader’s work, as well as what I don’t. The film is stylish to a fault — in fact, maybe to its own […]
Yes, it’s chock full of gross-out gags, stupid jokes and even stupider characters. And, no, it isn’t much more than an elaboration on The Spy Who Shagged Me. But it’s also the first — and possibly only — non-stop hysterically funny comedy of the year, featuring more wild invention (both comedic and cinematic) than a […]
In the main, the big Disney summer release, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, is the “spectacular” event it’s been touted as. Much of the film’s design is strikingly beautiful, the story line is effectively simple, the script is witty enough to pass muster with adult viewers, but there’s a central problem in that the film ultimately […]
All too often, expanded special editions of movies are nothing but barefaced attempts to squeeze the last drop of milk out of a proven cash cow. With Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now Redux, however, it’s a case of a cow that had never been properly milked in the first place. When Coppola’s beleaguered production was […]
Oh, yes, Antwone Fisher is manipulative as hell. It pulls out all the stops — and occasionally cheats shamelessly — in a full-frontal assault on the tear ducts. Every time the film looks like it’s going to take an unexpected turn, it pulls back and heads straight for the predictable. It’s often too tentative for […]
Squarely aimed at a youth market, Antitrust is really little more than a typical tepid thriller that’s been tarted-up with modern technology (some of which looks pretty specious), an appealing cast of young actors, a handful of genuinely clever plot twists, and one of the most unfortunate unintentionally funny lines ever to sneak by preview […]
Three things you must know before seeing Anger Management: 1) It’s not About Schmidt, 2) it’s not Punch-Drunk Love and 3) it’s not anywhere near as funny as its trailer. I say all this up front because I’ve been in the position of seeing no less than seven people walk out of this movie — […]
“The deeper you look, the more you will find,” claims the advertising for Angel Eyes, but a more honest assessment would be, “The deeper you look, the more you will find wrong with this movie.” Alright, it’s not a complete wash-out, but Angel Eyes is one of the more indifferent movies to come along in […]
When you’ve built a surprise summer hit out of the precarious premise of one’s “first-time,” an impossible question looms: What can you possibly do for a follow up? The makers of American Pie 2 don’t waste their time trying to answer that question. Unlike its predecessor, the second helping of American Pie doesn’t include plot […]
“Bad is good again,” say the ads for this latest take on the Jesse James (played by Colin Farrell, Tigerland) saga — a somewhat bizarre claim since the storyline of American Outlaws is a more blatant whitewash job than ever Tom Sawyer perpetrated on Aunt Polly’s fence. Oh, sure, they rob banks and shoot up […]
I really wanted to like this movie, but the movie itself kept getting in the way. Here, it seemed, was a chance for a comedy that wasn’t airheaded or grounded in “shock” humor that’s usually more puerile than actually shocking. Here was a dynamite cast working from a premise as solid as any classic “screwball” […]
Returning to France after the mixed blessing of helming a big-budget Hollywood film, Alien Resurrection, Jean-Pierre Jeunet disproves Thomas Wolfe’s adage that you can’t go home again. Not only did he go home, but once there he made his best film yet: the utterly captivating Amelie (Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amelie Poulain), an instant classic and […]
