Yes, it’s big and clever and inventive. First-time theatrical feature director Rob Marshall (who helmed the TV version of Annie) and screenwriter Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters) have done a splendid job of transferring a stage show to the screen — brilliantly preserving its theatricality without ever making the proceedings seem stagey. I admit: I […]
I have no earthly idea just what it is that so many critics are seeing in this monumentally stupid waste of an astonishing array of talent. There are more plot holes, unrealistic coincidences and unbelievable contrivances per square inch of Changing Lanes than there are cars on F.D.R. Drive (where the movie’s plot is set […]
Grrrrrrr. Hoodwinked again. Cats & Dogs is not a treat. In fact, I give it the Bare Bone award for the most misleading preview of 2001. Like the rest of the packed audience, I recently fell for the furry-fun promised by the previews and was eager for an afternoon of anthropomorphic amusement. Cats & Dogs […]
Steven Spielberg is back with a more accessible, viewer friendly film than either A.I. or Minority Report — and Catch Me If You Can is apt to ingratiate him to admirers who were not thrilled by the direction those other two films indicated he was taking. Many will doubtless view this as a return to […]
I have to confess up front that I am one of the few people who did not in the least admire Forrest Gump, so I was looking forward to the reteaming of star Tom Hanks and director Robert Zemeckis with the same degree of enthusiasm usually reserved for a festival of Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis films. […]
With John Madden at the helm and Nicolas Cage as an opera-singing Italian soldier (complete with dubious accent), Captain Corelli’s Mandolin very easily could have turned into Mussolini in Love. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. Granted, the film has its share of problems — something Universal signaled loud and clear when they pushed the release back […]
Teen-reporter Maggie West — fresh from a stint on the journalistic high-road reviewing Les Miserables — now romps curbside in order to scope out the graduating senior class of Huntington Hills High. Frankly, I could hardly wait to send her out there … movies don’t get much more “teenier” than Can’t Hardly Wait, and the […]
Oh, how this reviewer wanted to love this movie. From the moment I heard its title, so campy — yet so girly — I hounded Ashely to let me screen it. In a satisfyingly ironic twist, I watched Cheerleader on the anniversary of the day my first love relegated me to the closet (along with […]
Yes, it’s silly and stupid. I can also add that it’s not terribly well made. The lighting is questionable, the editing is ragged and the process-work (oh, yeah, those monks really appear to be battling on a mile-high rope bridge) looks like state of the art, circa 1962. Most of early reviews of Monk pummel […]
When it comes to A Bug’s Life (or any creature’s life), Michelle Raiford is a woman who knows her stuff. One of the “directors of chaos management” at All Pets Animal Hospital, I’ve seen Michelle comfort a thermodynamically-challenged Iguana, as well as cheerfully clean up after the alpha canines when they’ve lifted their legs and […]
Bubble Boy is a nasty fairy tale that should have gotten boiled in a cauldron and left on the shelf forever. The only thing that saves this mean-spirited mish-mash is the bubbly charm of the teen leads. Jimmy (Jake Gyllenhall, October Sky) was born without immunities, and he’s lived all his life inside his germ-free […]
There are so many good things about Brown Sugar that it’s a shame that plot isn’t among them. The players are all attractive and good in their roles. Taye Diggs and Sanaa Lathan have exceptional screen chemistry. The screenplay manages to create characters who actually talk about something worth hearing. They have goals, dreams, backgrounds. […]
The new film — actually a digital video production — by local filmmaker Chris Bower is being presented for one showing only this Thursday night at 10 at the Fine Arts. I won’t say that Brother Cellophane is a good film; it isn’t. It’s far too derivative to be genuinely good. Bower made his film […]
Takeshi Kitano’s American debut as writer-director-star (Beat Takeshi is Kitano’s acting sobriquet) is a mixed bag and a mixed blessing. Best known for his yakuza (Japanese gangster) films — Violent Cop, Boiling Point, Sonatine — Kitano, not surprisingly, chose this form with which to make his impact in America. Since Kitano is also an accomplished […]
Bringing Down the House is not a good movie. It’s not even an especially well-made one, which is something of a surprise, since whatever else might be said about director Adam Shankman’s The Wedding Planner and A Walk to Remember, they were solidly crafted, professional films. With rare exceptions — a brilliantly shot and edited […]
Fantastically fresh and funny, Bridget Jones’s Diary is a blessed reminder of just how good — and how pointed — British comedies can be. In a world seemingly overrun with truly stupid and truly tasteless attempts at humor in such rubbishy offerings as Say It Isn’t So and Tomcats (as well as the by-the-numbers blandness […]
The immortal Tom Lehrer once penned these lyrics — “Alma, Alma, please tell us. All modern women are jealous. You didn’t even use Pond’s. Yet you got Gustav and Walter and Franz.” This is the concept being explored in Bruce Beresford’s Bride of the Wind. Unfortunately, despite it being a sumptuously mounted, worthy attempt, the […]
Silvio Soldini’s Bread and Tulips is without question the most utterly beguiling and charming romantic comedy to come along since Chocolat. It’s not quite in that league and it probably isn’t as good as its nine — count ’em, nine — Donatello Awards (Italy’s version of the Oscar) might indicate, but it’s nonetheless a tremendously […]
Funnier than most comedies, more moving than most tear-jerkers and more apt to outrage than the most frenzied Oliver Stone diatribe, Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine belongs on everyone’s must-see list. It certainly must have already been on quite a few people’s lists, judging by the enthusiastic reception it received at the Fine Arts when […]
My God, Gwyneth Paltrow is thin. The poor, poor woman. She appears to be made out of clothes hangers twisted into the shape of a cocktail waitress. It ain’t healthy. If she ate a peanut, you could watch it move through her body like a mouse inside a snake. Her shoulders couldn’t support the weight […]
“Video never lies, but film does.” That throwaway line uttered early in Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 is the key to the entire point of the movie — which is an improvement over its freakishly successful predecessor, The Blair Witch Project. The interest in the original film — generated via an Internet site and […]
