I’m trying to think of a reason to give Barry Sonnenfeld’s most recent misfire anything beyond a half-star rating, and I’m not getting anywhere. Having laughed once — at Jeff Daniels as a good-natured rube saying, “I am filled with chagrin” — hardly seems a good enough reason. I will however note that there was […]
Before South African filmmaker Jamie Uys took the art-house world by storm with The Gods Must Be Crazy, he made quite a few films, including his best-known work, Animals Are Beautiful People. The 1974 film is a decidedly offbeat documentary — a serio-comic look at the animals of the Namib Desert in southern Africa. It’s […]
It’s about as old-fashioned as it can be. It obviously attempts to cash in on the freakish success of Spellbound, as well as the art-house cache of Bee Season. At bottom, it’s basically a pretty standard uplifting underdog sports flick — except the sport is cerebral rather than physical. It culminates in what has to […]
If you’re like me, you saw the terrific previews for The Sentinel and waited eagerly for an intelligent, artery-thumping thriller. I’m sorry once again to be the bearer of bad news but, folks, we’ve been hoodwinked again. The first couple minutes of the movie are fascinating, revealing the split-second sharpness and hyper-vigilant skills the Secret […]
I deliberately avoided learning very much about the Silent Hill video games on which Christophe Gans’ film of the same name is based. I wanted — as nearly as possible — to approach it as a film on its own merits, since I’ve never played the game and likely never will. I also had no […]
Film-school grad and first-time filmmaker Monty Lapica overcomes a slightly off-putting screen presence and the fact that he’s a little too long in the tooth to be playing a high-school kid in the surprisingly assured Self Medicated, released in 2005. Lapica plays Andrew Eriksen (a thinly veiled version of himself), a high-school whiz kid who’s […]
I enjoyed Friends with Money well enough while I was watching it. I didn’t think it was great, especially clever or profound. But it was entertaining in its slight way, and for a change I didn’t spend the bulk of a movie with Jennifer Aniston wondering what the fuss is over her — perhaps because […]
David Hugh Jones was the third filmmaker to graduate from the BBC’s Monitor series — following (though less successfully) in the footsteps of John Schlesinger and Ken Russell. Though Jones’ forays into theatrical filmmaking have been limited, they’ve also tended to be of a literary nature and a pretty high caliber. Betrayal (1983)is an excellent […]
Both disappointing and not, American Dreamz confirms the suspicion that Paul Weitz is just too much a softie to be a wholly effective satirist. Perhaps that’s why Weitz has himself claimed that his new film isn’t a satire, but a comedy. The truth is that it’s more of a satirical farce than anything else — […]
Judging by the reviews I’ve read for Cache, I am supposed to be blown away by its myriad profundities, its mastery of film, its ability to create tension, and so on. I’m not. I’m also supposed to have been shocked — shocked — by a scene of brutal daring unlike anything ever encountered in the […]
Perhaps because I was prepared for The Wild to be a disaster of the sort associated with the Hindenburg docking in Lakehurst, N.J., and it wasn’t quite that, I’m prepared to call it, pleasantly, not too appalling. Truthfully, for all its problems — ranging from lack of originality to uneven animation to indifferent writing — […]
As with all low-to-no-budget independent films, Lawrence Benner’s The Nudger must be judged on something of a sliding scale. It’s absurd, unfair and counterproductive to attempt to look at a $15,000 movie and expect it to measure up to even the most financially-constrained Hollywood production. What’s surprising then with The Nudger is how accomplished it […]
More disposable than a five-day-old Good News razor, David Zucker’s Scary Movie 4 is strictly a movie for the moment. As with Zucker’s first outing in the series, it’s entirely reliant on the topical — and on the supposition that the viewer has seen (in this case) Saw, The Grudge, Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, […]
Reminiscent in some ways of Bill Condon’s Gods and Monsters, this 2002 film from veteran filmmaker Franco Zeffirelli slipped under the radar most places (including Asheville), and despite its fanciful — occasionally downright preposterous — storyline, it’s hard to see why it didn’t receive more attention. Certainly, Jeremy Irons is a bankable enough name, and […]
Atom Egoyan’s 2002 film, Ararat, met with very mixed reviews and a less-than-enthusiastic push by its distributors, Miramax. The film didn’t play in Asheville, which was understandable to some degree — not so much because the topic of the film is a volatile one, but because the film is so heavily layered in its construction […]
You can tell spring is officially here because outdoor movies — courtesy of Walk-in Theatre — are back. And the first up has time travel, a band of roguish dwarves bent of thievery, the Supreme Being (Ralph Richardson) at war with the Evil Genius (David Warner), some Monty Python-like humor, big name guest stars. What’s […]
Fans of Christian-music star Michael W. White might welcome The Second Chance because it lets White stretch his creative wings and try acting. But don’t count on seeing much of his gold-record singing. If the filmmakers had actually made a vanity piece for White and allowed him to do what he does best, the movie […]
Even as a Happy Madison Production tossed together by Adam Sandler for about a buck and a quarter to showcase his otherwise unemployable buddy, Rob Schneider, The Benchwarmers plumbs new depths. This is less a movie than a catalog of bodily excretions and secretions. Aside from the obligatory assortment of flatulence “gags” (fla]tulence having become […]
I’m not at all sure what the few detractors of this unusually sophisticated — and frequently hilarious — satire on spin-doctoring wanted it to be, though I get the sense that they wanted it more squarely aimed at Big Tobacco. I suppose that’s understandable, but the tobacco lobby is such an easy target that an […]
It would be an easy thing to take apart Liz Friedlander’s Take the Lead. Yes, it’s the umpteenth retelling of one of those “teacher who made a difference” stories, designed to morally uplift viewers and leave them with a smile, a tear, a song in their hearts and, in this case, rhythm in their feet. […]
Here’s the skinny on Phat Girlz — it’s a whole lot better than you’d expect, especially coming from a first-time director (Nnegest Likke). It delivers a worthwhile message about the joy of loving yourself for who you are. At times, it’s funny, even sweet, and the most gorgeous male creature on the planet is the […]
