I didn’t buy the guff about Eli Roth being the “savior of horror” when Cabin Fever came out and I’m not buying it now, though Hostel is a much more accomplished piece of work than his debut offering. That said, I’m cognizant of the fact that 2005 was one of the worst years in the […]
Enough already with “revisionist” takes on fairy tales and Shrek wannabes! This independently made CGI-animated film picked up for distribution by the Weinstein brothers doesn’t even look or feel like a real movie — in fact, it resembles nothing so much as the work of a third-year film student convinced he’s done something really fresh […]
Maybe it’s that my expectations were so low that you couldn’t have found them with the aid of a minesweeper, but I didn’t hate this admittedly slipshod and silly offering from Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions. Almost all the other critics tell me I’m supposed to, though at least one of these reviewers lost all […]
With the possible exception of the other films of Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiariostami (with whom I am not familiar), you’re not likely to find anything much like Close Up, his 1990 offering. Apparently Kiarostami’s movies often take this same idiosyncratic approach: They’re documentary in nature, but not in execution — or at least not wholly. […]
That Sienna Miller’s character name, Francesca Bruni, is taken from the Bob Hope comedy Casanova’s Big Night (a film in which Casanova was played by Vincent Price — someone had a vivid imagination!) ought to clue critics in on the basic idea that Lasse Hallstrom’s Casanova is not intended as a biopic or an historical […]
I remember when I saw my first Betty Boop cartoon. I was 18 years old and two friends and I were subjecting ourselves to what was billed as a three-day MGM 16-movie marathon at the University of South Florida. It started at 7 p.m. on a Friday and ended sometime on Sunday evening — with […]
Uwe Boll has made his masterpiece with his third video-game-to-movie opus, BloodRayne! In all honesty, if I thought for a minute this Roquefort-riddled camp-fest was as intentionally ridiculous, stilted, witless and over-the-top as it actually is, then I’d actually mean that. Well, almost. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that BloodRayne‘s engaging claptrap quality is pure happenstance […]
As things shook out, 2005 became particularly noteworthy as a year in which most of the better films were either political in content, or dealt with gay or GLBT issues. Of course, given the responses from some quarters, you could say that there’s no real difference between the two. There’s no question that Ang Lee’s […]
Far more terrifying than anything in the ludicrously overrated Wolf Creek are the words “based on a true story” — and that’s exactly how this nasty, amateurish crapfest from Down Under starts. It’s downhill from there. At least once a year, some bottom-of-the-entrail-pail horror flick comes along that gets tagged as new, daring, groundbreaking and […]
It’s tempting to write a free pass for a movie like The Ringer, because it’s so obviously well-intentioned — at least insofar as any movie starring Johnny Knoxville can be so construed. The problem is that the movie itself is so blandly predictable, so shamelessly manipulative, so flatly directed and so unfunny that it’s impossible […]
Like an entertaining guest who doesn’t know when it’s time to go home, The Producers overstays its welcome — a feeling exacerbated for anyone familiar with the compact 88-minute 1968 film. When Mel Brooks turned that film into a Broadway musical, he didn’t remove much of the original script, mostly just adding songs and reworking […]
Rumor has it that Rumor Has It … was one of those beleaguered projects plagued with infighting and a change in director less than two weeks into production — and onscreen evidence suggests that the rumor is far from unfounded. The admittedly clever notion at the heart of the movie — that The Graduate was […]
2005 will be remembered for a quartet of fine films about international connectedness: The Constant Gardener, Lord of War, Syriana, and now Munich, Steven Spielberg’s long-awaited, controversial look at Mideast terrorism. Munich’s basic structure as adventure tale/psychological thriller comes from Vengeance, a book by Canadian journalist George Jonas which, although disputed by some, purports convincingly […]
Upon seeing Memoirs of a Geisha, screenwriter Barry Sandler commented that it was “insufferable, interminable, excruciating and unendurable — and those were its good qualities.” His assessment pretty much mirrors the bulk of the film’s reviews. Maybe it was all that negative hype — and the lowered expectations that went with along with it — […]
Loggerheads is very probably the best film I’ve ever seen that was made in and is about North Carolina. It also offers, at least from my perspective, a far truer picture of the state than is presented by the usual “red state” stereotype. It’s little wonder that writer/director Tim Kirkman refers to North Carolina as […]
Like a piece of rancid gorgonzola cheese, Fun With Dick and Jane has oozed its way into theaters as part of the holiday festivities (I guess Columbia Pictures was out of lumps of coal for our stockings). This film may not be the worst of the week’s bevy of releases, but it’s clearly in the […]
Filmmaker Tim Kirkman’s first film, the autobiographical Dear Jesse, is both very different from Loggerheads and yet not all that much so. Both films deal with being gay and reactions to gay people. Both deal with issues of family. Both are essentially and inescapably products of North Carolina. Of course, Dear Jesse is a documentary, […]
Cheaper by the Dozen 2 is full of good messages: Families are wonderful and bigger families are more wonderful. Families should do lots of things together because kids grow up before you know it. And the hardest thing all parents have to do is let their kids go. The nature of movie messages is that […]
Logic tells me that any film where I can predict exactly what’s going to happen long before it does — right down to pegging what the final shot will be — ought to smell from herring. Yet there’s a time and a place for everything. The Family Stone is one of those films that succeeds […]
A movie that proves the old adage, “a fool and his monkey are soon parted,” King Kong is every bit as big as you’ve heard — and filled in with something like equal parts inspiration and cinematic hot air. Its 187-minute running time is undeniably too much and really does seem born more of Peter […]
This was the opening-night film at the 2005 Asheville Film Festival; in all honesty, it didn’t seem like much of a coup at the time. That is, until we actually got to see this remarkable little movie — which, incidentally, has since picked up Independent Spirit Award nominations for Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, […]
