That Tony Scott has directed thousands of TV commercials perhaps explains why the interminable 147 minutes that comprise Man on Fire are a nonstop barrage of aggressive effects. Still, this does nothing to excuse Scott’s having ended up with a movie that looks like it was shot by a cat having a fit in a […]
This short documentary (62 minutes) on painter, poet, sculptor, writer, philosopher and visionary M.C. Richards is of local interest because of Richards’ connections to Black Mountain College — that bygone experimental school that she preferred to a tenured position at the University of Chicago. Her coming to BMC was a bold move; as M.C. Richards: […]
My lowest-of-low expectations for this latest comic-book-to-film opus weren’t helped by having to see it at the time I was really hoping to catch Kill Bill Vol. 2. So I couldn’t have been more surprised to find myself liking The Punisher much more than not (and I freely concede that part of the movie’s appeal […]
Finally, Kill Bill Vol. 2 has invaded our cinematic lives. And it was worth the wait, even if this second half of Quentin Tarantino’s elephantine movie-geek wet dream does some major gear shifting away from the explosive cinematic flurry of Vol. 1. Where that first film was cinematically playful, Vol. 2 relies much more on […]
Yes, it’s My Big Fat Greek Drag Queen — even if Connie and Carla might more appropriately be better dubbed Some Like It Hot Meets Victor/Victoria. No matter how you slice it, though, this is yet another vanity project for Nia Vardolos — aided and abetted by producers Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks (who loses […]
Sure, on the surface 13 Going on 30 is not a whole lot more than Big with boobs, but the new film has an agreeable charm and considerably more emotional resonance than its obvious inspiration (not to mention that star Jennifer Garner’s actions seem more believable than those of Tom Hanks in Big). Where Big […]
It’s been a year since all the quirky killers and the neurotic dentist from The Whole Nine Yards plugged holes in a bunch of bad guys and started new lives. The film, released in 2000, was pretty funny, in a noir Coen brothers kind of way, using its Montreal location to add panache to otherwise-ordinary […]
This is the scariest movie I’ve ever seen. There’s a reason I don’t climb mountains: They terrify me. Oh, sure, they’re picturesque in the distance — all that majesty and closer to heaven stuff. Then you get up close and personal with those pretty peaks, and they become downright lethal. The higher up you go, […]
Before tackling the actual merits of The Girl Next Door, I’d like to pose a question: Who, exactly, is the target audience here? It’s not so much the material itself that makes me ask, but the movie’s pop-rock soundtrack. Presumably, this film is aimed at audiences just barely old enough to qualify for admittance to […]
It started life as a supposedly gritty R-rated project to be helmed by Ron Howard, with Russell Crowe cast as Davy Crockett. But Howard and Crowe walked (though the former is still listed as producer), whereupon the project inherited John Lee Hancock as director and Billy Bob Thornton as Crockett, and was stripped of some […]
Cedric the Entertainer is a funny guy. He added a lot to the original Barbershop, walked away with Barbershop 2 and has enlivened flat-footed movies like Kingdom Come and Serving Sarah. But he’s locked in a losing battle with Johnson Family Vacation, which scores high marks as one of the worst-crafted films I’ve ever encountered. […]
Ella Enchanted is one of those movies that comes just near enough to working that it’s all the more infuriating that it finally doesn’t. This is further aggravated because parts of the film are quite charming and you just know that a few million bucks in improved special effects and some work on the script […]
The only reason I ever saw Phil Karlson’s 1973 film Walking Tall was that I was a projectionist at a drive-in — backed up to, aptly enough, a cow pasture — that was showing this fluke exploitation hit. I was frankly morally opposed to what I knew of its shoot-first-ask-questions-later brand of “justice,” and nothing […]
Julia Stiles exudes intelligence. Luke Mably (in his first major role) possesses charm and poise. Ben Miller nicely dishes up a sense of bemused superiority. James Fox is a tower of dignity. Miranda Richardson has style, intelligence and regal bitchery to spare. Director Martha Coolidge knows just how to pour on the romance with the […]
Yes, everything you’ve heard about the sexual frankness in The Dreamers is true. Not only is there a good bit of skin, but it’s surprisingly — and literally — in your face. And there’s also a good bit of sex — explicit sex. And since the film deals with both incest and sublimated homosexuality, it’s […]
It’s the Old West, and big, bad cattle rustler Alameda Slim (voiced by Randy Quaid) has been using his hypnotic yodel to steal all the cattle within earshot. Without their herds, the small ranchers are forced into bankruptcy and lose everything. Maggie, a prized prima donna dairy cow (voiced by Roseanne), is given a new […]
Armed with a cult-favorite comic book, just the right actor to play the title character, and the kind of budget he couldn’t have imagined when making movies like Cronos and The Devil’s Backbone, Guillermo del Toro ought to have had a great film right at his fingertips with Hellboy. And maybe he did, but if […]
Remakes are very rarely a good thing — especially those reworkings of movies you love. And in my apparently minority view, films starring Tom Hanks are often not all that much more of a good thing. Combine these factors with the fact that the Coen brothers’ last opus, Intolerable Cruelty, was little more than an […]
Errol Morris’ The Fog of War is a sobering, chastening, riveting work, and one of the most unsettling cinematic experiences imaginable. And that’s not in the least because it was filmed well in advance of our current war; though World War II and Vietnam are actually being discussed, Fog invariably seems to be commenting on […]
Over the years, Robert Altman has given me a vast amount of pleasurable and/or thought-provoking moments at the movies. I’ve liked a lot of his work — and even loved some of it (Brewster McCloud, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, A Wedding, Popeye, Short Cuts, Gosford Park). I have also often found him overrated — […]
After I burned out on admiring the gorgeous, slightly sub-Tim Burton production design by Bill Boes (who started out trying to make films look Burtonesque with Monkeybone), and after I got beyond wallowing in cinematographer Oliver Wood’s strikingly saturated colors, I realized I still had about 70 of Scooby Doo 2’s 91 minutes to slog […]
