In Spanglish, which is less a story than a snapshot of a crumbling marriage populated by sitcom characters, Adam Sandler plays John Clasky, an average man with an average name and an above-average life. With his burgeoning double chin always covered in a slight shadow of stubble, he’s a celebrated…
This much can be said for the movie version of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events: Its villain, Count Olaf, just might be Jim Carrey’s finest screen role. A bitter, would-be master thespian who delights in donning ridiculous disguises and adopting funny accents, he doesn’t seem that far removed…
A Very Long Engagement, the new film by French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (most famously of Amélie), will have its fans. For one thing, there’s no denying its beauty, an onslaught of gorgeous tableaux, painstakingly arranged and shot through filters to exclude colors that don’t suit (i.e., anything other than sepia…
If you’ve already decided to see Ocean’s Twelve, it’s probably best not to read much about it. Unlike its predecessor, a remake that clung to a hoary heist formula, the sequel contains ample pleasures, most of which amuse as the result of surprises both great and small. There’s no one…
They walk among us. They resemble people, approximate our words and actions, present themselves more or less as human. And yet they are more–a different species, with their own dark legends, their own clandestine meeting places. They are dorks, and they are going to be pretty OK with Blade: Trinity…
Mike Nichols’ new film Closer is a boiling pot of lust, mistrust and double-dealing that might well be taken for outright soap opera–or, in quite a few places, soft-core porn–were it not for the sophisticated gleam of its well-heeled London desperadoes and the vicious dazzle of its dialogue. Adapted from…
Movies pushing the indomitableness of human nature tend to make me puke, mainly because they’re often created with a palpable self-congratulatory air by film-biz insiders whose real-life concept of “suffering” extends to being brought an incorrectly prepared frappuccino. This emetic response is doubled when the featured indomitable human happens to…
If you’ve ever gone line-dancing with a gaggle of amputees on crank and hallucinogens, you know something of the feeling engendered by viewing Alexander. This broad, bold and ambitious film by Oliver Stone presents itself as a fairly straightforward endeavor, but its rhythms quickly go strange while its participants hobble…
As the year stumbles toward its conclusion and critics begin penning their best-and-worst compendiums, here’s a holiday contender fit for the all-time Naughty List. Based on the John Grisham novel Skipping Christmas–which, face it, is less a novel than a pint-sized impulse item stacked on bookstore checkout counters–Christmas With the…
Oh, that Johnny Depp. Played in some dime-a-dozen rock bands, did some average television, made a few cutesy little movies. Whatever. Yeah, he messes with his looks in a fun way sometimes, but otherwise he merely rides that nicotine-sunken-cheeks thing all the way to the bank. The guy’s popular, but…
Jerry Bruckheimer has always insisted he cares less about critical acclaim than commercial appeal. “We make movies for the common man,” he said when we spoke almost three years ago, as Black Hawk Down was crash-landing in theaters. “The pictures that I’ve made over the last 20 years or so…
The most shocking thing about Kinsey, the first film from writer-director Bill Condon since 1998’s Gods and Monsters, is how shocking it actually is. Within the confines of a standard biopic (A Beautiful Dirty Mind, you might call it), Condon refuses to play it straight–which is only appropriate, since his…
A week after having seen Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, no memory of it remains save some scribblings in my notepad, such is the slight nature of this woeful, forgettable sequel. Squandering the good will that lingers from the original, now a beloved relic among the singletons and smug…
Most articles written about The Polar Express have focused on its groundbreaking technology, which takes the process used to create Gollum in The Lord of the Rings one step further. Much as Andy Serkis’ performance was digitally mapped and reproduced via CGI, so, too, is Tom Hanks computer-generated here as…
The witless inanity of After the Sunset is so numbing that the sole reason for any living creature to sit through it–man, woman or household pet–is to marvel at the speed and variety of actress Salma Hayek’s costume changes. After an opening sequence in Los Angeles, this failed jewel-caper comedy…
When was the last time you saw Paul Giamatti? And when the film ended, did you realize how much you would miss him? It was just last year that Giamatti played the hilariously beleaguered Harvey Pekar in American Splendor, a role that he occupied with slumped, head-hanging perfection. Yet as…
Since its initial publication in 1986, myriad filmmakers have attempted in vain to film Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ comic book Watchmen, in which costumed superheroes have been outlawed and are being summarily exiled and executed by an unknown baddie. At the moment, Darren Aronofsky (Pi) is set to direct…
Writer-director Charles Shyer’s Alfie is less a remake of the 1966 film that made Michael Caine a star than it is a retooling that softens the horrific blows struck by the original; it’s sweeter, too, cotton candy spun from decades-old arsenic. The original, written by Bill Naughton (who also penned…
The Ramones have been commodified (shilling Bud Light with “Blitzkrieg Bop”), deified, even gentrified (on the soundtrack to The Royal Tenenbaums, where “Judy Is a Punk” thrashes for dear life alongside Vince Guaraldi), but seldom have they been so thoroughly analyzed. There have been myriad boxed sets and re-releases–Rhino seems…
Those familiar with the films of David Gordon Green (George Washington, All the Real Girls) likely have one big question about his latest feature, Undertow: Is there more of a story this time? The answer is…sort of. Green, who favors meditative, meandering portraits, and is often compared to Terrence Malick…
Throughout p.s. , a thoughtful, self-possessed film from director Dylan Kidd (Roger Dodger), there is a sense of the disaster it could have been. A 39-year-old woman, divorced and emotionally shuttered, meets an adoring, adorable young man. The boy (compared to her, he’s a child) is a replica of her…
Ray, director Taylor Hackford’s 15-years-in-the-making biography of Ray Charles, begins as you might hope: with 1959’s “What’d I Say (Part 1)” pulsing on the soundtrack, the organ’s low moans building toward that familiar, funky frenzy. It almost serves as an early climax, a bracing thrill served up before a word…
