Eight years ago David Atkins wrote one of the most bizarre and original screenplays of the 90s, Arizona Dream — a work that managed to mix Eskimos, used cars, accordion playing, turtles, stand-up comedy, fantasy, Johnny Depp, Faye Dunaway, Jerry Lewis, and Lili Taylor into a strangely cohesive and compelling whole. Now, Atkins appears on […]
Don’t be fooled by the clever and entertaining trailer for this one. It’s yet another of the comedy dogs from the Columbia kennel, and it might actually be worse than such gems they sent our way this year as Joe Dirt and The Animal. Granted, Columbia wasn’t responsible for Freddy Got Fingered — or the […]
As clever as a firkin full of simians and as stylish as they come, writer-director Fabian Bielensky (a former assistant director with one previous screenplay, La Sonambula, to his credit) has fashioned what may just be at the top of the list of con movies. It’s certainly the perfect summer entertainment — a refreshing antidote […]
Any film version of Nicholas Nickelby that casts Nathan Lane as theatrical impresario Vincent Crummles and Barry Humphries (in his Dame Edna drag incarnation) as Mrs. Crummles is clearly a Dickens of a departure from Masterpiece Theatre-dom. (In fact, I can’t completely suppress a smile just thinking about Alistair Cooke screening this.) However, don’t get […]
Martin Lawrence has to be the singularly most untalented, most obnoxious, most misogynistic and most racist comedian working in movies today. That’s a lot of mosts, but “most overpaid” can easily be added to the list. Lawrence was reportedly paid $20 million for starring in National Security. I can’t think why, since I’ve yet to […]
Cop Drama Narc’s unforgettable opening sequence explodes at a no-holds-barred pace that then doesn’t abate for the next 100 minutes of this mean, mesmerizing, adrenaline-charged, repulsive, violent and tragic bad-cop movie. Undercover narc Nick Tellis (Jason Patric, Incognito) chases a drug dealer through the vice-infested back streets of urban Detroit — where bullets fly, a […]
I couldn’t help but spend a great deal of the seemingly interminable running time of My Wife Is an Actress thinking of the moment in Stardust Memories when Woody Allen is asked if he finds it hard directing himself and answers, “No, I just find it hard to resist the temptation to give myself too […]
A friend of mine came up to me part way through My Big Fat Greek Wedding and asked how I liked it. “It reminds me a lot of a TV sitcom,” I remarked. That’s not terribly surprising when you scan the credits of director Joel Zwick — Family Matters, Full House, Joanie Loves Chachi, Happy […]
When people see the name Barbet Schroeder, there’s an immediate tendency to think, “Oh, Reversal of Fortune.” In fact, they might do better to more warily think, “Oh, Single White Female.” And while Murder by Numbers isn’t quite in that latter league of silly suspenser, it’s closer to that than to Reversal of Fortune. Murder […]
View him as you like — preposterous self-indulgent fake, cinematic visionary, or deeply disturbed individual — there’s no denying that David Lynch is unique. Nobody makes movies quite like his. Perhaps nobody wants to. At his best (The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet), his work is challenging, thought-provoking, and shot through with keen, albeit often peculiar, […]
There’s a scene early on in Frank Capra’s 1936 classic, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, where Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) is packed off on a train by the townsfolk of Mandrake Falls, Vt. on his trip to New York to collect his $20 million (interestingly, the amount of Sandler’s guaranteed salary for the new version) […]
If you hate musicals, stay away. If you hate opera, run for your life. If you want to see the most intoxicating, mind-bending, dazzling, nonstop display of sheer cinematic invention in ages, then waste no time in getting to Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge!. This is The Goods. This is what filmmaking ought to be about […]
As I walked up to the Fine Arts Theater, I couldn’t entirely suppress a slight chuckle at the marquee’s bold proclamation of Mostly Martha’s star, Martina Gedeck. Indeed, when I went inside, I just had to ask, “So is Mostly Martha pulling in the Martina Gedeck crowd?” The irony is that while there isn’t, of […]
Some critics are using last year’s In the Bedroom as a cudgel against Brad Silberling’s Moonlight Mile. The “raw honesty” of Bedroom’s much-acclaimed angst-fest is being trotted out as a measure of the “falseness” of Moonlight Mile. Now, why is Moonlight Mile being called “false?” Simply because it allows its characters to both grieve and […]
The 26-year-old comedy classic is back on the big screen in a stunningly restored print that not only captures the inspired lunacy of the British comedy troupe in their prime and at their most controlled, but reminds us what an exceptionally accomplished piece of filmmaking Monty Python and the Holy Grail actually is. While the […]
Sweet but not saccharine, cute but not sick-making, Monsters, Inc. isn’t in the same league as Shrek, but then it really isn’t meant to be. Shrek was an animated film for adults that had sufficient whimsy to also appeal to children. Monsters, Inc. is an animated film for children that has enough savvy humor to […]
Intense in a way that In the Bedroom only wishes it was, Marc Forster’s Monster’s Ball (the title taken from an old English term for a condemned man’s last night) is far and away the most powerful movie in town right now — and very likely the best. The simplistic assessment of the movie as […]
Filled with color, lively characters, clever situations and music, Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding is a joyous little film that’s actually considerably deeper and more substantial than it appears on the surface. It’s been compared to the old Spencer Tracy-Elizabeth Taylor vehicle, Father of the Bride, but in reality it has far more in common with […]
The trailer for Monkeybone does the film a grave disservice by making it look like an utterly tasteless, one-joke, leering, “hubba-hubba” comedy of the most vulgar kind. (The trailer also suggests much post-production tampering, since one pivotal scene in the film is entirely different from what we see in the trailer.) And, yes, Monkeybone is […]
Having made the nor’ by nor’west “collaboration” with Stanley Kubrick of A.I., Steven Spielberg seems to have decided that he is Kubrick. (A character named Burgess and eye-clamps applied to Tom Cruise are obvious references to A Clockwork Orange.) The simple fact is that he’s not Kubrick — a truth he evidences again and again […]
It’s the old Law of Diminishing Returns with a vengeance — sequelitis in its most extreme form. It’s not so much that Barry Sonnenfeld’s extension of his 1997 hit (delayed these many years whilst Messrs. Jones and Smith hammered out the most lucrative possible deals for themselves) is bad. It’s something worse than bad: It’s […]
