Though it’s usually pegged as a documentary, Orson Welles always referred to this engaging, playful movie as an “essay film,” and that’s probably nearer the mark. It’s ostensibly an examination of two of the 20th century’s great fakers — art forger Emyr de Hory and writer Clifford Irving, two men Welles suggests may have become […]
For years this fact-based drama was Japan’s highest grossing film — not unreasonable, if you consider the current popularity, in our country, of March of the Penguins. Antarctica gives you not only penguins, but also sled dogs and Japanese explorers — not to mention a Vangelis score (this last is perhaps a matter of taste). […]
What would you say is the “Greatest Good?” According to the official site of this Forest Service-produced centennial documentary on the history and mission of the Service, “Where conflicting interests must be reconciled, the question shall always be answered from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run.” The […]
Saying that Serenity was a good bit better than I’d been expecting is a little shy of unbridled praise, since I’d been looking forward to this film about as much as one might look forward to cranial surgery. Despite the stoutest of efforts by friends to alter this attitude, I continue to lack the proper […]
As I remarked to my viewing companions upon exiting Roman Polanski’s newest film, “You know, the only thing wrong with it is that it’s Oliver Twist.” (Actually, I had added a descriptive word in front of the title, but my editor would’ve substituted asterisks, so you’d have had to guess at it.) Anyhow, that is […]
I cannot convey how much I did not want to see this movie. I tried to palm it off on my Xpress reviewer-pal Marci Miller. No soap. She claimed she was swamped. My thought at the time was that she merely had better sense than to want to hie herself all the way to Hendersonville […]
Into the Blue isn’t a movie so much as it’s a lame excuse to show Jessica Alba in a variety of skimpy swimming attire. Even before the film gets to the point of “personalizing” its leering approach, the camera leaves little doubt of its primary focus: lingering on scantily clad ladies shown mostly south of […]
Disabuse yourself of the notion that Tim Burton’s latest is going to be on as grand a scale as his earlier animated feature, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, and you’ll have a better time with this more intimate, sweetly macabre film. Burtonians will understand when I say Corpse Bride perhaps has more in common […]
When 20-year-old American amateur Francis Ouimet (Shia LaBoef, Constantine) won the U.S. Open golf tournament in 1913 against the greatest professional player in the world, Englishman Harry Vardon (Stephen Dillane, King Arthur), journalists on both sides of the Atlantic called it “the greatest game ever played.” The Disney movie about the famous competition — a […]
The Gold Rush marked Chaplin’s first Charlie Chaplin film to be released by his own company, United Artists, and was his most ambitious project to date (1925). And it remained one of his personal favorites. He went so far as to recut, score and narrate a reissue version in 1942. Today, it battles City Lights […]
“No Nudity, No Violence, Unspeakable Obscenity,” claims the tag line for this most unusual documentary, and they ain’t just playing “Annie Laurie” on kazoos when they say that. The movie is unrated — but would have gotten an NC-17 if it had been submitted to the MPAA — for a very good reason: It speaks […]
Despite a few phrases and terms (“in the hood,” “that’s jacked,” “I was trippin’”) that I’m pretty sure were not common coin in 1978, Malcolm D. Lee’s Roll Bounce feels more like a movie from 1978 than one about 1978. It simply lets it be 1978 without bludgeoning the viewer over the head with quaint […]
The First-Grader Vanishes … I mean Flightplan would like to be a Hitchcock movie when it grows up. Unfortunately, it never gets closer than swiping the premise of The Lady Vanishes, and instead ends up being perhaps the most absurd airborne melodrama since Doris Day landed an airliner in Andrew L. Stone’s Julie way back […]
The Pinewood Derby is a miniature version of the Soapbox Derby that millions of kids under age 12 have enjoyed. Created by a California Boy Scout Cubmaster in 1953, the derbies take place indoors using cars handmade out of 5-by-7-inch pinewood rectangles and raced on polished wooden tracks. (If you hurry, you can see a […]
This is more than a mere documentary of the history of political activism at the University of California at Berkeley; it’s an oral history of a struggle (the good and the bad and the downright foolish) that has never gone away, but has merely metamorphosed over time into different forms. It’s as relevant today as […]
I’m baffled by both the critics who’ve hated this movie and the few who’ve defended it. OK, perhaps not so much by the former, who, by and large, seem to feel that an overall distaste for horror pictures is a badge of cultural superiority. But the defenders of Venom are another matter. They seem to […]
Here’s a chance to get your feet wet in the realm of Ken Russell movies prior to the Asheville Film Festival, where he’ll be this year’s guest of honor and recipient of the festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The Music Lovers — or to give the movie its full onscreen title,Ken Russell’s Film on Tchaikovsky and […]
Lord of War trades in irony. So it’s particularly apt that its greatest irony is that it starts out the work of a filmmaker well aware that he’s dealing with a visual medium and ends up as the work of a filmmaker who’s retreated into preachy speechifying. Writer-director Andrew Niccol opens Lord of War with […]
Just Like Heaven is a romantic comedy that will please everyone, especially those who walked out of The 40-Year-Old Virgin because of its foul language. The only four-letter word in Heaven is “cute.” Everything about this modern-day Sleeping Beauty tale works: immensely likeable stars, a terrific script that actually allows those stars to create believable […]
Local interest in Junebug is high, owing to its North Carolina setting and pedigree — and for the most part, that interest is justified. This modest little movie captures something of life in this state in ways that few previous films have. There’s not a lot of plot. Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz, The Emperor’s Club), who […]
I don’t care that Cry_Wolf expects me to buy 22-year-old Julian Morris (Whirlygirl) and 26-year-old Lindy Booth (Dawn of the Dead) as high school students. I don’t mind that it expects me to accept Jon Bon Jovi as a tweedy teacher (a concept giving new meaning to “Living on a Prayer”). I’m not even particularly […]
