This is the movie that made Troma Films what it is today — and remarkably, its creators escaped prosecution. Prior to this film, Troma had specialized in soft-core porn, which this effort resembles with its bad lighting, bad acting, bad scripting, gratuitous sex scenes and — worst of all — nonstop porno-movie musical score. But […]
There’s a moment in The Sound of Music where Eleanor Parker appears on the scene with a pitcher of pink lemonade, announcing that the concoction is “not too sour, not too sweet.” To this Richard Haydn wryly comments, “Just too pink.” Having thus destroyed my street cred as a curmudgeon by being able to recall […]
There’s more manic invention, creativity and the sheer joy of filmmaking in any five minutes of Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory than has yet been seen in all the mainstream releases of 2005 put together. The film is not going to be to everyone’s liking — and thank God for that, because a […]
Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent film about the trial and execution of Joan of Arc is often cited as “one of the best films ever made” — something that too often means you’re about to get cinematic cauliflower (it’s good for you, but you may not much like it). Yet Dreyer’s film remains among the most […]
2005 must be the year of leisurely paced gems — movies that move like molasses but pack an unforgettable emotional wallop. There was Scotland’s Dear Frankie, the American Off the Map, and now there’s Germany’s recent box-office champ, Schultze Gets the Blues. This simple, unadorned film is the droll, gently told tale of a German […]
Saying I’ve seen worse things than Fantastic Four loses any qualitative meaning when you realize I’m talking about such worse things as Freddy Got Fingered, The Adventures of Pluto Nash and House of the Dead. It is worth noting, however, that FF is certainly an improvement over such similar outings as Catwoman and Elektra. All […]
When it was first released in 1967, Richard Burton’s film version of Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus was pretty soundly trounced by the critics. And while from today’s perspective it’s not hard to see why, it is hard to understand how they didn’t at least recognize they were in the presence of a […]
If you took The Ring, The Grudge, The Tenant, The Sentinel, Rosemary’s Baby, The Changeling, The Devil’s Backbone, Repulsion, The Ring Two and The Others, dropped them into a blender and pressed “puree,” you’d probably get something like Dark Water. This slow-paced art film of some considerable merit has bamboozled its way into multiplexes by […]
In the wake of all Tom Cruise’s … let’s say, idiosyncratic antics to prove to the world that he’s just dippy about Katie Holmes and therefore simply cannot be gay, what is one to make of a couple early moments in his new opus, War of the Worlds? First, his boss asks him, “What’s your […]
Here’s a classic case of “if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen the movie.” In fact, if you know the premise, you could write the movie yourself. That it took three writers — even if two of them were John J. Strauss and Ed Decter (The Lizzie McGuire Movie, The Santa Clause 2) — to […]
It’s an interesting coincidence that Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle (Haura no ugoku shiro) should open locally the same week as War of the Worlds, since both films involve striking images of war-torn landscapes and cities being blasted out of existence by fanciful machines. Equally interesting is the fact that Miyazaki’s film is far more […]
This early David Lean effort — adapted from the Noel Coward play by Lean, Ronald Neame and Anthony Havelock-Allan — was a gigantic hit in post-War Britain, and one of the few films with a British pedigree to attain popularity in the U.S. during that era. Until James Bond and the Beatles, the phrase “It’s […]
Hal Ashby’s last great film is also probably his best work other than Harold and Maude, and it’s virtually a toss-up as to which of the two is the better movie. I have a personal preference for Harold and Maude, but it’s such a very near thing that it scarcely matters. Like most great films, […]
As a zombie movie, Land of the Dead is an OK horror opus. For director George A. Romero, who has a tendency to turn 60 minutes worth of story into 120-plus minutes of movie, it’s reasonably compact. And it does have an agreeably handmade feel to it (which, admittedly, results in a certain cheese factor). […]
First of all, Herbie: Fully Loaded gets points just for not being The Perfect Man (Hilary Duff’s new flick). And beyond that, the movie just isn’t bad. It may not be in the same happy-surprise league as the Lindsay Lohan/Jamie Lee Curtis remake of Freaky Friday, but it is a pretty pleasant diversion, albeit one […]
Destiny — or more to the point, Der Mude Tod (literally The Weary Death) — was the film that brought the great German filmmaker Fritz Lang worldwide acclaim. It’s also said to be the movie that inspired Luis Bunuel to take an interest in filmmaking. And it was clearly a major influence on the play […]
The best thing about Bewitched is that its cinematography is so plodding that, unlike Nicole Kidman’s other movies where the camera is all over the place, you actually get to see her for more than a few dizzying split seconds at a time and can realize how exquisitely gorgeous she truly is. The idea behind […]
I didn’t think it possible that Hilary Duff could sink any lower than her last film, Raise Your Voice. I had not reckoned on the combined talents of producer Ma Duff (sure, she’s Hilary’s manager, but how does that qualify her as a producer?), Duffian directorial favorite Mark Rosman and this appalling screenplay by Gena […]
This movie’s been touted as a kind of blend of last year’s spelling bee documentary, Spellbound, and Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom, but it’s not riddled with the troubling undercurrents of the former and lacks the quirky, almost John Waters-esque style of the latter. And while Mad Hot Ballroom doesn’t share the overbearing success ethic of […]
The Asheville Community Resource Center continues its Cult/Trash movie series with this Canadian oddity from filmmaker Lee Demarbre, who made his mark (such as it is) by cooking up a trailer for a nonexistent movie called Harry Knuckles, which paved the way for a short film, Harry Knuckles and the Treasure of the Aztec Mummy. […]
This fascinating documentary about the lives and works of composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham works in large part because it allows the duo — along with their friends, co-workers and a treasure-trove of archival footage — to speak for themselves in a more or less cinema verite manner, without editorial comment. Filmmaker Eliot […]
