The world premiere of Dave Chappelle’s Block Party at the Toronto International Film Festival last September had the vibe of a sold-out concert–all those spotlights beaming to and fro in front of a venerable old theater, all that pushing and shoving for the best seats, all those celebs in the…
Didn’t Richard Donner retire? A 1980s star-director name, among many, that should now send bolts of discouraging dread down your spine, Richard Donner may well be seeing his filmmaking skills peak with 16 Blocks–even if saying it’s his best, least flatulent, most efficient film is tantamount to saying that the…
The thing that’s so difficult about Cowboy del Amor–a richly layered documentary by Israeli filmmaker Michèle Ohayon–is the same thing that makes it an accomplished work: It refuses to take sides. Ohayon presents Ivan Thompson, a.k.a. “Cowboy Cupid,” an aging Texan who has made it his business to fix up…
The press notes for Pulse would have you believe that it predates many of the recent Japanese horror films that have been remade for American audiences, but that doesn’t seem to be true. It predates the U.S. remakes, yes; but according to the Internet Movie Database, Pulse came out in…
If you’re a parent trying to teach your sullen teenage kids that movies with subtitles aren’t all bad, try taking them to see Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor). Like Christophe Gans’ The Brotherhood of the Wolf or Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, this is a foreign-language film that proves that…
What do little girls want? If we are to follow the emotional heart of Aquamarine, a new film about two 13-year-olds who help a runaway mermaid fall in love, the answer is…bling. Hailey (Joanna “JoJo” Levesque, pretty much a Lindsay Lohan ringer) and Claire (Emma Roberts) are best friends in…
Walk the Line (Fox) No matter what a junkie does with his spare time — say, redefine country music, or forge one of history’s most enduring personas — movies about junkies are a drag to watch. So it’s too bad this Johnny Cash biopic is a by-the-numbers fall-and-redemption tale. A…
It should be too early in the year to expect a good movie, let alone a great one; anything released prior to the Oscars is bound to be forgotten by spring. Yet here it is, the first–dare we use the term that’s all but been stripped of meaning by journalistic…
If you have any awareness at all of the existence of Running Scared–no, not the Gregory Hines/Billy Crystal cop buddy comedy, but the new film written and directed by Wayne Kramer–chances are you have but one question: How in God’s name does anyone expect us to believe that Paul Walker…
All the President’s Men (Warner Bros.) It’s no mystery why Warner Bros. chose to rerelease All the President’s Men now; at last we know how much — which is to say how little — Mark “Deep Throat” Felt really looked like Hal Holbrook. A new doc on former FBI second-in-command…
Freedomland manages a seemingly impossible feat: It’s both turgid and overwrought, eliciting the shriek that fades into a yawn without anyone ever noticing. It’s a wholly dreary piece of work, yet another dismal entry on the résumé of director Joe Roth, an only-in-Hollywood hack who’s allowed to make movies, among…
Penguins, shmenguins. If you want some new insight into the codes of animal behavior, have a look at Eight Below, an inspirational adventure in which a team of sled dogs marooned in Antarctica fights to survive winter without benefit of man or Milk-Bone. In the process, the intrepid furry heroes…
Comedy Central Roast of Pamela Anderson: Uncensored! (Paramount) This sucker’s vulgar — duh — but not shocking in the least bit; Sarah Silverman swears, and Courtney Love drinks and smokes . . . who knew? That said, this roast ranks among the meanest ever televised; why Bea Arthur shows up…
In his 1961 farewell address, President Eisenhower warned Americans that an insidious new force was taking hold in the country. He called it the “military-industrial complex.” Born of necessity during World War II, this once-valuable conjunction of the military, the federal government and the armaments industry was suddenly taking on…
It is often written of Harrison Ford that he’s the most profitable movie star in history, to the tune of some $3.8 billion in box-office receipts worldwide. Of course, once one subtracts from that total the first three Star Wars movies, the Indiana Jones trilogy and two outings as CIA…
This is not George Lazenby making his doomed run at James Bond, or even Mel Gibson presuming to play Hamlet. This is serious heresy, combined with a touch of felonious assault. It has evidently not occurred to Steve Martin that, just as there is only one Eiffel Tower, there is…
Let’s get right to the point: If you are the type of person who enjoys seeing attractive naked girls meet a hideously graphic demise, there’s a scene in Final Destination 3 that will wear out the pause and rewind buttons on your DVD remote a few months from now. Mega-stereotype…
That Curious George existed at all–much less as a franchise, an icon enduring some 65 years–was a result of “happy circumstance,” wrote Houghton Mifflin publisher Anita Silvey with some understatement in 1991, upon the 50th anniversary publication of The Complete Adventures of Curious George. Silvey and critic Leonard Marcus recall…
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (DreamWorks) Not since Finding Nemo has there been a movie so easy to recommend for all ages and tastes. But despite having crafted a near-perfect film, directors Nick Park and Steve Box second-guess themselves constantly on their audio commentary, as well as…
Tommy Lee Jones’ feature directorial debut is probably much as you’d expect: a blast of nostalgia that nonetheless accepts the realities of modernity, which isn’t surprising coming from an actor who’s getting up there in years but has found more fame as an old man than as a young’un. The…
Anthony Hopkins lends style points to any movie in which he appears. The thing may be a dog, but the actor who brought the gruesome psychopath Hannibal Lecter to life and got deep inside a repressed English butler always gives us something fascinating to behold. The depth and gravity of…
A Good Woman, Mike Barker’s adaptation of the Oscar Wilde play Lady Windermere’s Fan, has been gathering dust for some time. It played the Toronto Film Festival in the fall of 2004 before opening in 2005 in every country in the world except this one. Such dawdling doesn’t bode well…
