Youth Without Youth, Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed return to the fray, is a curious project—well-crafted, personal and movie-movie old-fashioned even in its vanguard aspirations. Simply put, it’s a Faustian romance about the reversal of time and transmigration of souls which, shot mainly in Romania, adds a soupçon of Balkan chic…
Once (Fox) Easily the year’s most perfect pop album — damned good movie too, the finest “musical” of the past 20 years. The disc’s making-of refers to it as a “modern musical,” but Once is as old-fashioned as it gets: Guy (Glen Hansard) meets Girl (Markéta Irglová), they fall in…
Here’s the thing: Tim Burton pulled it off. Nearing the end of an uncommonly strong year for American movies, he’s taken a hallowed classic of the modern musical theater, hemmed in the narrative from well over two hours to well under, cast confessed non-singers in the principal roles and somehow…
Hell of a thing, getting Mike Nichols to adapt the yer-kiddin’-me story of Charlie Wilson, the congressman from Lufkin, Texas, who damned near single-handedly helped the Afghans kick out the Russians in the 1980s. Says right there on page 11 of the paperback edition of George Crile’s 2003 book Charlie…
The Bourne Ultimatum (Universal) The final installment in the Bourne-again trilogy is the one in which the CIA assassin’s true identity is revealed. It’s the origin story in reverse — how brilliant. But solving the mystery (and misery, as Jason Bourne’s among the most tormented action heroes of all time)…
Juno marks the second film for director Jason Reitman and the first for screenwriter Diablo Cody, author of the Pussy Ranch blog, which, surprisingly, has very little to do with baby kittens. Reitman, having made his debut with a swaggering adaptation of Christopher Buckley’s Thank You for Smoking, is said…
There are two momentous performances in the Darwinian horror fable I Am Legend. One is by the movie’s star, Will Smith—but more about him in a minute. The other is by the movie’s visual effects—not the ones that bring to life a nocturnal army of shrieking, carnivorous beasties (though those…
Jonathan Demme, who directed Tom Hanks to an Oscar as the AIDS-afflicted lawyer in Philadelphia, may be the most well-meaning filmmaker in Hollywood; Jimmy Carter, winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human…
Paul Schrader’s cinema is largely defined by the pathology of his male protagonists, and with The Walker, he’s added a striking new character to his gallery of loners. Carter Page III (Woody Harrelson) is the degenerate scion of a political family. Openly gay and eminently presentable, this American aristo makes…
Kites fly high over the San Francisco Bay and Kabul (OK, China), but not much else soars in Marc Forster’s flaccid adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s vivid 2002 novel, which covers three decades of Afghanistan’s misery under serial totalitarian rule. Arriving on the heels of Atonement, The Kite Runner tells a…
The Girl Next Door (Anchor Bay) If the horror of Saw was a poblano pepper, this here is the habañero. Derived from Jack Ketchum’s infamous novel, sometimes word-for-word, The Girl Next Door — based on a true story — is a sort of Hostel meets Stand By Me: A group…
There are comedies of discomfort, and then there’s Margot at the Wedding, Noah Baumbach’s scalding follow-up to The Squid and the Whale. An immersion in sibling malice and simmering resentment, with one of the most infuriating characters in recent movies holding us under, Margot tramples the commandment that only the…
Casting Nicole Kidman as The Golden Compass’ glacial, intractably smooth megalomaniac Mrs. Coulter is no less inspired for being obvious. Indeed, she was the first and only choice for director Chris Weitz, who adapted this first installment of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy. Despite the book’s description of the…
Hot Rod (Paramount) Andy Samberg, best known for stuffing his dick in a box on Saturday Night Live, is Rod Kimble, a wannabe stuntman with very little “man” in him. He lives with his mom (Sissy Spacek, not kidding) and a stepdad (Ian McShane), who needs a new heart at…
Though we first met back in 1991, when the NEA-funded homoeroticism of his first aboveground feature, Poison, was rattling the halls of Congress, Todd Haynes and I bonded in April of 1995, when we served as jurors for the short-film competition at the USA Film Festival in Dallas. On our…
This version is the “final cut” only because Warner Bros., director Ridley Scott and the producers have run out of cuts to peddle 25 years after its initial release. By most estimations, the latest offering—in which the biggest change is the revelation that Harrison Ford’s 21st-century Bogie is really a…
John Turturro’s third and loopiest film is prime film-studies fodder, perhaps best suited to the tail end of a musicals seminar, along with Dancer in the Dark and other “postmodern” song-and-dancers. A Coen brothers production with a cast as unlikely as it is impressive (including Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, James…
Hearts of Darkness:A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (Paramount) At last available on DVD, Eleanor Coppola’s 1991 documentary about her husband’s tumultuous trek downriver remains, easily, the best film ever about the making of a movie and unmaking of a man. Francis Ford Coppola thought he was going to spend 16 weeks in…
Something about that movie though, well I just can’t get it out of my head/But I can’t remember why I was in it or what part I was supposed to play. —Bob Dylan, “Brownsville Girl” Literally speaking, Bob Dylan isn’t “there” in Todd Haynes’ staggering mix-tape biopic I’m Not There…
Hard to believe that it’s been 20 years since the release of The Princess Bride, if only because it hasn’t aged a day. Bereft of the pop-culture gags that curdle the Shrek movies and absent the cynicism of most other kids’ films used solely to peddle fast food and impulse…
As one of what novelist Stephen King calls his Constant Readers, I was as jazzed as every other monster-lovin’ geek when word came that filmmaker Frank Darabont was making a movie of King’s classic novella, The Mist. Cynics suggested that after tanking big time with his Frank Capra homage, The…
I’m Not There is the movie of the year — but to whom does Todd Haynes’s Bob Dylan biopic actually belong, and when was it really made? The great attention-grabber of last month’s New York Film Festival, I’m Not There is as notable for its stunt casting as its elusive…
