Stardust is less an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s 1999 novel than of its dust-jacket synopsis. That will come as disconcerting news to fans of the author, who thus far has avoided the fate of fellow fantasy writers and comics creators who’ve had their works mangled by the studios’ clumsy assembly…
Chris Tucker still believes in Michael Jackson. You can tell, because in the very first scene of Rush Hour 3, the actor-comedian squeals melodically, grabs his crotch and throws his arms up to the heavens. All that’s missing is a giant offstage fan to make Tucker’s shirt billow out behind…
Ingmar Bergman directed more than 50 features, but he was a significant figure in 20th-century culture in part because he was so obviously significant. Last week’s inch-above-the-fold front-page New York Times obituary cites Woody Allen’s pledge of allegiance: The Swedish director was nothing less than “the greatest film artist…since the…
The Bourne Ultimatum opens in Russia as the amnesiac super-spy Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) does what he does best: elude capture, crack skulls, brood. Lickety-split he’s en route to Paris, nursing his wounds and breaking out with a bad case of those itchy-scratchy hallucinations known as Hollywood Flashback Syndrome. Choice…
It’s impossible to write about David Wain’s The Ten without first making passing reference to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Dekalog and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. The former, originally made for Polish TV 20 years ago and first shown in the United States in 2000, offered a modern-day take on the…
In 1987, Bart Weiss viewed his nascent Dallas Video Festival as a way to collect “ephemeral media, the throwaway stuff no one paid attention to,” he says now, as the 20th Dallas Video Festival gets under way at the Dallas Theater Center and Angelika Film Center. The first festival included…
Oh, wipe that starchy Masterpiece Theatre moue off your face—pop Jane Austen is fun, especially when it’s almost completely made up. According to Becoming Jane, a new addition to the plentiful Austen spin-off canon, off duty our lady of graceful letters was hot stuff at cricket and kissing and had…
Hot Fuzz (Universal) The second feature from writer-director Edgar Wright and writer-star Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead) has been available on home video for decades: Hot Fuzz is, after all, a witty and wisecracking montage of clips from some hundred-plus A-list and bargain-bin action films, chief among them Lethal…
Sadly, No Reservations is not the big-screen adaptation of Anthony Bourdain’s snack-gulping, risk-taking Travel Channel show; you’ll find no monkey brains here, nor any attempts to party down in Beirut whilst Hezbollah and Israel blow each other to smithereens. This is just more of the same from the franchise factory—by-the-recipe…
Steve Buscemi the director is nothing like the art-damaged auteur Buscemi the actor played in 1995’s Living in Oblivion. No dry ice and dwarves for the victim of the cinema’s most celebrated wood-chipper massacre, who as a filmmaker inhabits tight spaces (an ice-cream truck, a prison cell) and trapped lives…
In his big-screen debut, Homer Simpson utters the “D’oh!” heard round the world—or at least as far away as Washington, D.C. (which, given the unspecified coordinates of Springfield, might not be that far at all), where President Schwarzenegger and an overzealous EPA chief (voiced by Albert Brooks) rush to contain…
Hard Boiled: Two-Disc Ultimate Edition (Weinstein) The Criterion version of John Woo’s masterpiece, about two cops (the overworked Chow Yun-Fat and the undercover Tony Leung) gunning for the Hong Kong Triads, is still the “ultimate” edition. It has a better commentary track (with Woo and Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary,…
Did John Waters sell out? Or did our ever-more-metrosexual age merely render him irrelevant? Certainly long before Hairspray took up residence on the Great White Way in 2002, Waters had abdicated his throne as America’s elder statesman of underground smut in favor of a more lucrative career as a neutered…
In the observation room of the spacecraft Icarus II, passengers sit on a bench in front of a large, rectangular screen displaying a view of what lies ahead. They gaze at the spectacle as you might marvel at special effects on some ostentatious plasma monitor. A seething orb of gas…
I wanted to hate I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, truly I did. Two straight guys pretending to be gay (insert fiscal excuse here); been there, done that (insert all known variants on The Odd Couple here). Rampant homophobia hiding behind liberal pleas for tolerance—blech. And it’s true that…
Just when it seemed Independence Day might be the exclusive province of Michael Bay’s Transformers, MGM rushes in with Rescue Dawn. Nothing if not appropriate, Werner Herzog’s latest feature, based on his 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, offers a suitably fantastic tale of war, freedom and fortitude, set…
George Ratliff’s Joshua debuted at the Sundance Film Festival to raves from a particular breed of audience member: parents. Because, see, no matter how hard Fox Searchlight’s trying to sell this movie as a horror picture—Rosemary’s Baby meets The Omen on the way to The Exorcist’s for a play date—in…
You’re Gonna Miss Me (Palm) A hit at the South by Southwest Film Festival two years ago, Keven McAlester’s doc about the Papa of Psychedelia, Roky Erickson, at long last gets its proper release. But time has done McAlester a tremendous favor: Had he shot the film too soon, he…
The magic has returned to the Harry Potter franchise, albeit magic of the old, black variety. The darkest and most threatening by far of the five Potter films, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is also the only series entry outside of the third, Alfonso Cuarón’s Harry Potter…
Transformers twiddles its big, fat, stupid robotic thumbs for the better part of two hours before jabbing them into your eye sockets and finger-fucking your brain in the last 20 minutes. Yes! It’s torture enough waiting for the iPhone and the second coming of Jesus without wondering when, exactly, this…
Eagle vs. Shark Written and directed by Taika Waititi. Starring Loren Horsley, Jemaine Clement and Craig Hall. Opens Friday. Napoleon Dynamite looks like Cary Grant next to the hero of this Kiwi quirk-a-thon: a hulking, sullen creep named Jarrod (Jemaine Clement, co-star of HBO’s new Flight of the Conchords) whose…
Chancer: Series 1 (Acorn) Available solely in the U.K. for years, this is a small-time release featuring a modestly big-time star at the get-go of his career: Clive Owen, looking all of 12 years old and 73 pounds, is a sacked investment banker who winds up in the employ of…
