When everything from toothpaste to hair dye is touted as “age-defying,” when we will inject toxins to smooth wrinkles and lift, snip and tuck everything else, one gets the impression that we’re not all that thrilled with the thought of our own mortality. But even in such a youth-obsessed culture,…
It’s never my actual house, or any house I’ve lived in, but I clearly feel it is my home. I’m inside, walking through, a silent observer at first. The house is crowded with people, shoulder to shoulder; they laugh, dance, drink. I wander through them, not recognizing anyone. I say,…
The not-so-great American pastime of serial killing has splattered pop culture in recent years, but from the biopics of America’s Most Unwanted to the nervy theatricality of Anthony Perkins, Kevin Spacey or even David Byrne (whose Talking Heads song “Psycho Killer” says it all), only one legend stands definitive, that…
I might as well just come out and say it: Spirited Away is the best movie I’ve seen all year. Though it would be a masterpiece in any language, Hayao Miyazaki’s animated spectacular (and Japan’s highest-grossing film ever) is being released by Disney simultaneously in two versions–one in the original…
Where is the dividing line between romantic devotion and psychotic obsession? How can you know whether your romance is Titanic…or Fatal Attraction? Veteran Spanish writer-director Vicente Aranda (Lovers) uses the story of Queen Joan “the Mad” (1479-1555)–daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, mother of Charles I of Spain (who became Emperor…
Brad Silberling’s instincts are right about half the time, which means that, depending on your point of view, his films are either half empty or half full. His last picture, 1998’s City of Angels, an American remake of Wim Wender’s poetic Wings of Desire, tried to marry European art-house cinema…
The few pieces of furniture onstage in a couple of new productions–The Good Thief at Kitchen Dog Theater and Love Letters at the Stone Cottage in Addison–wouldn’t crowd a corner of the average den. Couple of chairs. Couple of tables. Glass of water. Glass of beer. The minimalism is intentional…
This is not how he’s supposed to talk. These are not things he’s supposed to say. These are not things he’s supposed to do. Not the Teen People poster boy, the YM golden child. Not the WB heartthrob. But there he is, anyway, snorting, guzzling, toking, dealing, stumbling, grinding, moaning,…
Capture the Moment: The Pulitzer Prize Photographs within the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza is a great display of memorable images and, by its very nature, it would have to be. It represents the best in photojournalism from 1941, the year of the first award, to the present. If…
So, you wanna go to a movie? Every time I hear that question I have to do a mental balancing of the bank account, decide if I should risk smuggling in snacks and dig for the student ID. Generally, the basic movie outing hits the $15 or $20 mark, and…
Rare is a documentary about a movie as vital and essential as its subject; Lionel Chetwynd’s Darkness at High Noon: The Carl Foreman Documents, an exploration of Hollywood’s shrinking beneath the shadow of the House Un-American Activities Committee, springs to mind, but it’s the aberration rather than the norm. So,…
Though we are generally the urban type–hip boutiques, black clothing, art films–nothing makes us itch to wear boots and sculpt butter like the State Fair of Texas. The giant festival runs for 24 days and expects to host more than 3 million visitors from across Texas and the United States…
So there’s no confusion, the star of Sweet Home Alabama is Reese Witherspoon, who graces the film’s poster in full-body pout and appears on the press kit in close-up mug-shot smirk; any closer, and we’d shoot up her nostrils and exit through her pores. Of course, there’s a great deal…
Chris Smith’s brief but thoroughly entertaining Home Movie carries on a grand tradition of American documentary–seeking out the eccentrics and contrarians among us. In the space of an hour Smith provides glimpses of five U.S. houses and their owners, and–thank goodness–his whirlwind tour is less suited to Architectural Digest than…
Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is released from a mental institution the day of her older sister’s wedding. One afternoon with her dysfunctional family and she’s ready for rehab again. No such luck, however, so instead Lee turns–or returns–to her favorite pastime: self-mutilation. Based on a short story by Mary Gaitskill…
Many a marriage must feel exactly like Winnie’s predicament in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, now being forcefully and hilariously performed at Kitchen Dog Theater. There good wife Winnie (played by Shelley Tharp-Payton) stands in the first act, buried up to her waist in a mound of earth. Husband Willie (David…
It is a decade ago, and Neil Burger has trekked from New York to the small Texas town of Fredericksburg, where Admiral Chester Nimitz was born, where heroes gather at the National Museum of the Pacific War to reminisce and mourn, where tourists collect to pay their dues to the…
In The Banger Sisters Goldie Hawn plays Suzette, an aging groupie too stuck in a gloriously seedy past to move into the future. It’s 2002, yet she acts as though it’s 1969 and nothing’s changed–not the Sunset Strip’s Whisky A Go-Go, where she still tends bar behind sunglasses and illicit…
There’s no denying that U2 is awesome, nor that Phil Joanou is a snappy director, but the charming awkwardness of Sam Jones’ 16mm black-and-white rockumentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart makes one wanna murmur, “Rattle on? Humbug!” at the Irish Grammy-grabbers’ old-school cinematic self-celebration. As we turn our…
Among the more preposterous rumors spread by Harry Knowles, whose Ain’t It Cool News movie-biz-gossip Web site garners undue attention from studios too craven to do their own thinking, was one from year’s beginning: Terrence Malick, Knowles “reported,” was working on an adaptation of The Catcher in the Rye for…
Although his name sounds like an inventory notebook for candy bars, Heath Ledger is presently overcoming this confusion–as well as the plight of the pretty boy–to become one of contemporary cinema’s more vital actors. In The Four Feathers–as in The Patriot, A Knight’s Tale and Monster’s Ball–Ledger once again plays…
Muccino (But Forever in My Mind) pays his respects to Fellini (Juliet of the Spirits on television) and Tarantino (a Reservoir Dogs poster), then straddles with aplomb the intergenerational niche he’s carved between. It’s a mostly engaging approach, as confused Gen-Xer Carlo (Stefano Accorsi) struggles with his feelings for his…
