I admit it: I had a problem reviewing this film, having just seen Sin City not 30 minutes before. Ideally, I would have liked to put some space between the films, but deadlines and time frames don’t always allow for the ideal. It was very hard to shift gears between the two films, and that […]
Well, this film’s about as far from action-packed as you’re likely to get — and no, the title isn’t allegorical, it’s quite literal. This really is a movie about a weeping camel. Set in Mongolia, The Story of the Weeping Camel looks in on the life of a family over the course of one spring […]
This is the vilest, most disgusting and most violent film I’ve seen in some time. It’s also one of the most entertaining exercises in total stylization and pitch-black humor to ever hit the screens. The film’s as entertaining as it is disturbing — and as disturbing as it is entertaining. Sin City is also a […]
Spin-offs are common in the sitcom world — December Bride begat Pete and Gladys, All in the Family begat Maude and The Jeffersons, The Mary Tyler Moore Show begat Phyllis and Rhoda, etc. But the concept is a bit more unusual in the movies. Spin-off films usually seem reserved for disastrous comic-book movies like Catwoman […]
At first glance, Ruthie and Connie seems to be a moderately engaging, warm-hearted, well-intentioned little documentary of a type that’s been done too many times to offer much that’s new. But while this is the sort of film you’ve seen before, there are specifics at work here that raise the interest level a notch or […]
The only reason that watching Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous isn’t the worst way you could kill two hours right now is the fact that The Ring 2 is still playing. Otherwise, this seemingly interminable sequel would win that distinction in a walk. What were the filmmakers thinking? I mean, what besides making a […]
Because of the title, it’s understandable that audiences might assume that this movie is a reverse version of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?, the highly touted 1967 drama about interracial dating that starred Sidney Poitier, Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in his last role. But it’s not. Ashton Kutcher is not a white Sidney Poitier, […]
This is an engaging little documentary on a topic that’s rarely explored – and probably rarely thought about. I’ve certainly never given it much thought – but perhaps that’s because I spent many of my childhood summers living next door to a couple of lesbian farmers (tactfully referred to as “old maids” in those days). […]
Channeling the spirit of my late father, I’m tempted to dismiss The Ring Two with the phrase he uttered when confronted with a movie like this: “That was the nearest nothing I ever saw.” Alas, that assessment doesn’t quite do justice to this steaming pile of donkey droppings that’s being palmed off as a follow-up […]
I was surprised to find that this is the first talkie ever made of The Merchant of Venice, though television — mostly the BBC — has offered it up several times. The most famous of the TV versions (1973) starred Laurence Olivier (Shylock) and Joan Plowright (Portia), while the most intriguing (1972) starred Frank Finlay […]
Your appreciation of this film version of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera will largely depend on two factors: How you feel about the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, and your tolerance (or lack thereof) for filmmaking that tries too hard to preserve the theatricality of a stage production. Regarding the latter factor, it’s just too […]
As might be expected, in terms of the plot, Ice Princess is about as predictable as they come. So much so that it brings to mind Miss Prism’s definition of fiction in The Importance of Being Earnest: “The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.” But in Ice Princess, there […]
As filmmaking, The Take is a deeply flawed work, not in the least because Canadian-TV host Avi Klein (who directed) and anti-corporate author Naomi Klein (No Logo) insist on incorporating themselves in the drama of the film and the situation it describes. The best I can say for them is that they aren’t as grating […]
Judging by the apparent lack of enthusiasm at the box office on this film’s opening weekend, it would seem that the phenomenon known as The Passion of the Christ is over. Gibson re-cut the film — removing six minutes of the most graphic violence — in an attempt to receive a PG-13 rating. But he’s […]
Luchino Visconti, whose films tend to be long and rather slow moving, is not a filmmaker for everyone. That certainly was the feeling of the American distributor in 1963 when The Leopard first hit U.S. movie screens. Visconti’s film weighed in at a whopping 205 minutes, and 20th Century Fox execs felt stuck with an […]
In a wild, Erector-set world, a young robot seeks fame and fortune as an inventor. While fighting evil forces of planned obsolescence, he repairs his fellow robots with spare parts, proving that, “You don’t have to be upgraded to be valuable.” That’s the nuts and bolts of Robots, the latest animated adventure from the folks […]
OK, I admit it. I had a very good time watching the new Bruce Willis vehicle Hostage. But I strongly doubt that the filmmakers intended for said good time to consist of raucous laughter at the over-the-top, melodramatic shenanigans in this movie. No, I suspect their intention was to produce something more akin to nail-biting […]
This is one of those movies that you may end up wanting to like more than you actually do. The idea — updating Georges Bizet’s Carmen with new lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and an all-black cast — is certainly intriguing and even daring, though it’s perhaps not the “breakthrough” some modern writers would like […]
Lt. Shane Wolfe (Vin Diesel, Chronicles of Riddick) is a poster boy for the Navy SEALs: fearless, noble and super-sexy in that form-fitting wet suit. Wolfe and his fellow SEALs perform a daring high seas operation to rescue an American scientist from a terrorists’ ship. Alas, our scientist is later killed in an ambush that […]
I’ve been tussling with this movie ever since I saw it two nights ago. I still can’t decide if The Jacket gets close to something like greatness, or if it’s just a (sometimes accidentally) funny mess. At this point, I lean toward the former assessment, but can’t quite overlook the latter. This is a difficult […]
With considerable intelligence and discernment, Istvan Szabo’s film of Ronald Harwood’s (The Pianist) play, Taking Sides, tackles the thorny subject of the “de-Nazification” of high-profile artists who had remained in Germany during the war. However, the film deals from a stacked deck and only touches on the questions of who was “certified” as OK, who […]
