Attended by a rather sexy air of intrigue, the hit French film Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le Pacte des Loups) arrives upon our shores, and, refreshingly, it’s left up to us to figure out just what the hell it is. Monster movie? Costume drama? Martial-arts extravaganza? To say the least,…
Cate Blanchett can do no wrong, but even she can’t save Charlotte Gray, a World War II drama that never rises above the level of a 1950s-era adolescent romance novel. The Australian-born actress, who should have won an Academy Award for her performance in 1998’s Elizabeth, plays the titular character,…
Bangkok Dangerous, by twin brothers Danny and Oxide Pang, is an aggressively commercial genre piece that, like some recent Korean releases, has been clearly influenced by the Asian gangster genre once dominated by the now-ailing Hong Kong industry. And if the Pang brothers’ goal is to demonstrate to the world…
And so, adieu to 2001. The critic is older and crankier, a bit more gray but essentially the same, still given to muttering about “standards” and premature curmudgeonhood. The world, on the other hand, seems to have changed. We are embarking on a new century, finally, by the calendar and…
The Dallas Museum of Art’s new exhibit, European Masterworks, The Foundation for the Arts Collection at the Dallas Museum of Art, contains more than 100 works produced between 1700 and 1950 by Europe’s great masters. These paintings, sculptures and works on paper by artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Renoir, Rodin…
Only a guy very secure in his masculinity would ever say this: I have a weird fascination with romance novels. Maybe it’s because, being the sensitive sort, I’m somewhat interested in what women want, how they think, et cetera. Plus I can’t believe that women can get away with buying…
It’s almost easier to pick the year’s worst than its finest. Leading the pack is I Am Sam, in which Sean Penn does his Rainman dance for Oscar only to watch it horribly misfire, followed closely by Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (Nic Cage, who, given recent choices, might be mentally challenged),…
Had anyone asked me back in September how 2001 was looking, I would have been tempted to rate it as even worse than the dismal 2000 (which suffered further from proximity to the wondrous 1999). But my assessment shifted during the final quarter of the year–half because of some fine…
Normally, these year-in-TV columns are a breezy, easy write–a plea for good shows buried somewhere in an embittered litany of bad ones. In recent years, it has felt as though the proliferation of channels and choices has given us only more of the wretched and less of the watchable; satellite…
When David Quadrini stood on the bank of the East River and watched the World Trade Center collapse, he broke into a spontaneous wail. His knees gave, his eyes watered with overwhelming disbelief, and he knew, like the rest of us, that life couldn’t continue as it had before. But…
The photographs that some theater companies send to promote their plays are dreadful enough to send anyone not dedicated to supporting local stage arts screaming for the hills like hammy actors from a high school production of The Sound of Music. At worst, there’s an exit sign, a hanging mike…
When the press release for the “all-new” Pink Floyd LaserSpectacular hit our desk, our first reaction was to check the calendar. Nope, it’s not 1985. Our second was to inspect the release more closely, in case it was some ancient leftover. (The Dallas Observer’s offices are not what you’d call…
Appropriately, A Beautiful Mind does not offer a literal translation of the life of John Forbes Nash Jr., the mathematician whose work on game theories won him a Nobel Prize in 1994. The film leaves out significant events, people and places; it amalgamates central figures, disguises prominent locations and hides…
Had The Royal Tenenbaums been made by a first-time filmmaker unburdened by acclaim or expectation, it could be heralded–and then, just as easily, dismissed–as a light, literary exercise in filmmaking that’s as pleasant as it is frustrating. Its tale of a dysfunctional family of geniuses torn asunder then brought back…
It took Andre Dubus all of 18 pages to communicate the grief that fills every frame of Todd Field’s two-plus-hours In the Bedroom, a wrenching bit of filmmaking based on Dubus’ short tale “Killings.” Both story and film tell the same tale in the same solemn and gripping tone, with…
The most daunting thing for an actor is to portray a god, and when that god comes equipped with a tangle of myths and the quickest left jab in history, the actor’s job can soon verge into guesswork. To Will Smith’s credit, he has managed to get, at least partway,…
Love him or not love him, Lasse Hallström has done it again: the human frailty, the sorrowful past, the hopeful future, the triumph of love and family over crushing despair. Ever since he broke out in 1985 with his Swedish feature Mitt Liv Som Hund (My Life as a Dog),…
When he first auditioned for Any Given Sunday director Oliver Stone to play quarterback Willie Beamen, an embittered bench-warmer prone to fits of vomiting before each snap, Jamie Foxx was sure he’d blown it. Stone, as subtle as an ice pick to the cornea, said as much–loud enough so Foxx,…
The laughs are all there in black and white in It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder!, Pegagus Theatre’s stylish, fast-paced chiaroscuro comedy written by and starring Kurt Kleinmann. Twelfth in a series of satirical mysteries featuring lovably bumbling detective Harry Hunsacker (played by Kleinmann), this one gets a…
It’s become a cliché: A stand-up comedian, after years of living out of a suitcase, performing to rooms full (or not) of pleased spectators and merciless hecklers, happens to be in the right club on the right night and gets his Big Break. A sitcom deal follows. Jerry Seinfeld, Kevin…
Before the Thanksgiving dishes were washed and dried, the question was on everyone’s lips: “What are you doing on New Year’s Eve?” The answer, an honest one at least, would sound something like this: “I’ll be taking my chances on the road with all the other amateur drinkers and having…
The tricked-up charms of James Mangold’s Kate & Leopold may be precisely what the moment demands–if you accept the existence of chivalry, the possibility of time travel and the stream of bubbles emanating from Meg Ryan. Skeptics need not apply. Having toured the psychiatric ward in Girl, Interrupted and slogged…
