Sixty years ago, Japan surrendered to the United States, ending World War II. A week ago, following worldwide remembrances of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan’s prime minister marked the anniversary with an apology for Japan’s acts of aggression from 1931 to 1945, which killed an estimated 15 million people, two-thirds of them civilians. […]
It’s strangely apt that this film by Maximilian Schell on the legendary Marlene Dietrich should be the cinematic equivalent of the autobiography of her great mentor, Josef von Sternberg. The latter work, Fun in a Chinese Laundry, is at once enigmatic, deliberately obfuscating in nature and extremely revealing. I’m immediately reminded of a lyric by […]
The most casually preposterous movie to open this weekend is also the most wholly satisfying entertainment. Get over the fact the movie is set in a Detroit where rampant, open lawlessness — including, but not limited to, shootings, high-speed car chases, gangs with machine guns blasting away an entire house in broad daylight, and people […]
I had a fair idea of the level of humor we were in for when the press kit for Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo arrived — packaged like a condom. Little did I know that this was obviously pandering to the sophistication of us movie reviewers, since the wit involved in the press-kit presentation is on […]
With the five or six functioning brain cells remaining to me after watching The Dukes of Hazzard (I know people who’ve come off two-week benders with less brain damage than I feel I suffered from 105 minutes of this movie), I’ve been trying to think of anything vaguely positive to say about it. All I […]
It’s impossible to dislike any movie that starts with Orson Welles (at his Paul Masson wine-commercial most faux pretentious) lying his head off about a supposedly newly discovered historical event that could have prevented the French Revolution, only to sourly conclude that “men of integrity — and I may say of considerable resources — have […]
Consider the penguin. Mankind has been fascinated by this curious flightless bird for as long as its existence has been known. There’s an inherent charm to the little fellow. He pops up all over the place in popular culture. Nearly everyone from my generation seems to have been exposed to Richard and Florence Atwater’s 1938 […]
I’ve never quite subscribed to the view that The Magnificent Ambersons would have been a better film than Citizen Kane if only it hadn’t been mutilated by the studio while Welles was out of the country. But, hey, that notion makes a great story that adds to the myth of Orson Welles — and, of […]
In a world where mindless action movies are a dime a dozen, in a season when the testosterone flows like water, in an industry where mediocrity is all too often praised, one filmmaker dares to change forever what we mean when we say “lowest common denominator.” Seven months into the year he presents us with […]
Take the director of Surviving Christmas, some fresh-faced kids, a premise borrowed from The Incredibles with a dash of Mean Girls, and then toss in a few cult figures (B-list stars with rabid followings) like Kurt Russell, Lynda Carter and Bruce Campbell, and you get Sky High, a pleasant enough collection of derivative predictability that’s […]
“Friday, April 17, 4 p.m. — Venice, California. Huckleberry P. Jones, local pimp, narcotics peddler, and slumlord was seen entering a vacant house that he owned. While stashing some heroin in the basement, he stumbled upon a mysterious door. Naturally, he entered …” So begins Richard Elfman’s 1980 cult classic, Forbidden Zone, as wild a […]
Being G-rated, Tugger assures concerned parents their ears won’t be assaulted by swear words. Alas, the 65-minute film is so boring that the attempt to avoid being offensive might put them to sleep. In its favor, Tugger’s visual style is delightfully vibrant, crisp and clever, with a lovely, World War II-era vintage look. But the […]
“I had to admit I loved them,” Mark Bittner says simply, trying to explain to the camera that, although he doesn’t anthropomorphize the birds he’s nursed for many years, he also recognizes the strong emotional bond he has developed with them. The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill isn’t so much a “nature film” as it […]
If this were a Survivor game, you’d have to wonder if it would be possible for The Island to vote itself off itself. This should come as no great surprise, since The Island is a Michael Bay movie — even if it is a Michael Bay movie that manages to squander the combined talents of […]
OK, let’s get this straight: The Devil’s Rejects is a violent, sadistic, brutal horror picture punctuated with humor that’s blacker than the greasepaint festooning Sid Haig’s lips for his clown makeup. There are no likable characters. And if the movie has any message at all, it is undoubtedly reprehensible, since the closest it comes to […]
The cast in this cookie-cutter romantic comedy is almost enough to make me want to bump my rating up a half star. The movie’s not bad. It’s harmless and enjoyable — but it’ll float right out of your brain within a couple hours of seeing it, and there’s nary a single fall-down-funny gag in its […]
OK, I was wrong. This isn’t the disaster of a movie I thought it would be, based on the premise and the trailer. In fact, it’s a pretty darn good film, though I’d be hard-pressed to see it as the great work of art it’s been touted as in some quarters. It is, however, a […]
This is a pretty straightforward, unflinching documentary about the heroin problem in Vancouver, British Columbia, focusing on activist Ann Livingston and her relationship (both personal and professional) with addict/activist Dean Wilson, as well as then-Mayor Philip Owen’s attempts to combat the problem by establishing “safe” zones for addicts where shooting up is less dangerous. Those […]
The first question that comes to mind when watching Bad News Bears — a remake of Michael Ritchie’s 1976 film The Bad News Bears — is, what is the point? There has to be a better reason to remake a movie than to drop the word “the” from its title. Yet that seems to be […]
Only in the world of a Wim Wenders film would an angel express the desire to go home and read a Philip Marlowe mystery as one of the reasons he’d like to be human. But because that desire is expressed in a Wim Wenders film, it seems completely reasonable. And if that makes sense to […]
Perhaps because I spent a large chunk of my misspent youth as a photographer, I am a little resistant to the charms and emotional resonance of weddings. After you’ve heard the service more in one month than Zsa Zsa Gabor has in a lifetime, and have witnessed the same mildly crude jokes and all the […]
