Surf’s up. Palm trees sway invitingly in the breeze. The sparkling beaches are amply decorated with bikini babes and hard-body surfer dudes. Everybody has a nice cold drink with a wedge of fresh lime in it. Seen that way, The Big Bounce is as alluring a midwinter pitch for the…
Behold a tale of true love (between a boy and a bicycle), of tireless courage (from a bitty grandmother with a club foot) and of a very shocking new definition of sexy (three wizened matriarchs who ravenously slurp down frogs). This is The Triplets of Belleville, an animated extravaganza of…
There is a recent generation of American men who came of age too late for free love and wanton property-grabbing, and too early for post-grunge emotional wankery and info-age immediacy. Stuck on their iceberg, isolated by oceans from anything real like the original punk or goth movements, or Australia’s cinematic…
Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! opens with a movie within the movie. It’s the 1940s, and a hunky, square-jawed soldier (played by Tad Hamilton, who’s played by Josh Duhamel) stops his car along the side of a damp road; a woman, dressed in virginal nursing whites, gets out of…
The setting: an institutional high school in the affluent suburbs. The protagonists: two boys–intelligent, charming and smoldering–with typical suburban lives, including intact families and plenty of spending money. The plot: carnage. Assembling pipe bombs from ingredients purchased at Home Depot and commandeering shotguns slipped from the family cabinet, the boys…
Feel like an evening at the ballet? Robert Altman’s The Company, a lovely and superficial montage of performance, is less a movie than a series of impressions, a rich sampler of a season with one of America’s premier dance companies–the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago. There’s scandalously little by way of…
In 1998, a passionate majority of Venezuelans elected a new president. His name was Hugo Chavez, and he was the first leader in generations to come from outside the ruling class. He vowed to redistribute Venezuela’s oil wealth and to involve the people intimately in the political process. Openly comparing…
So, have you ever wondered what exactly goes into the painting of a portrait? You might have suspected there’s more to it than a painter saying something along the lines of, “Hey, baby, can I, uh, paint you?” and then someone else saying, “Yeah, sure, that’d be cool.” You might…
Not a lot of people know this, but our word “actress” is derived from the Greek phrase strumpetos luckyos, meaning “prostitute who somehow landed an agent.” The reason that this etymological root remains largely unappreciated is that it is entirely fake, fabricated for the present purpose of irritating a lot…
As a reader, it can be easy to assume that all the critics at a particular publication are more or less of the same mind, but here at New Times, that isn’t the case. We’re just too damn independent-minded to take our colleagues’ views into consideration, which is why, when…
Bill Gallo: Even dedicated art-house regulars missed Pavel Lounguine’s Tycoon: A New Russian when it was released this fall, but this intrigue-spiced tale of a ruthless yet surprisingly sympathetic Russian oligarch worked equally well as a crime thriller and a course in Russian fiscal policy (or the lack of it)…
Anthony Minghella’s magnificent film version of the Civil War epic Cold Mountain has much more going for it than Hollywood grandeur. Beyond its striking set pieces and gruesome battle scenes populated with thousands of extras, in addition to its movie-star glamour–Jude Law and Nicole Kidman are like beautiful pieces of…
For those who pay no mind to Oprah, the dispute at the heart of House of Sand and Fog concerns the occupancy of a run-down little bungalow just inland from the northern California coast. It’s not much of a place, really. And to get a glimpse of the Pacific you’d…
Seems a little early for a remake of Minority Report, but when your movie’s all about seeing and forgetting the future, who’s gonna remember Paycheck anyway? Like Steven Spielberg’s film of long-ago 2002, in which Tom Cruise sees the future and goes on the run to change it, John Woo’s…
For all of its inspired side trips down Imagination Lane (let’s call it that, because the “memories” of protagonist Edward Bloom are too majestic to be trusted and too affecting to be discounted), Big Fish is ultimately about one thing: the relationship between a son about to become a father…
You know how it’s often the ones we love whose flaws are most apparent? Well, when it comes to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, I am smitten. This film is a miracle, an extravaganza equal to its predecessors and in some ways more stunning. It…
The Mona Lisa Smile in question belongs, of course, to its star, Julia Roberts. Why? For no particular reason, actually. It’s just what Italian professor Bill Dunbar (Dominic West) calls her–Mona Lisa, perhaps because he’s an Italian professor possessing few points of reference outside the works of da Vinci. But…
William H. Macy’s plain-vanilla features and hang-dog screen demeanor have served him well. Who could resist him as the clueless car dealer who hatched the disastrous kidnapping plot in Fargo, or as the distraught husband of a frisky porn star in Boogie Nights? A splendid character actor with a gift…
Evidently, the French-Canadian writer-director Denys Arcand has a tremendous capacity for dividing the art-movie/film-fest crowd into enemy camps. Arcand’s fans see him as a vibrant wit with a supple mind, capable of juggling many ideas at once and spicing his quirky analyses of contemporary society with playful asides and deadeye…
To get the obvious out of the way first: Something’s Gotta Give is a film designed to appeal to older women, and it very likely will. Diane Keaton gives a good performance in it as a post-menopausal playwright who gets back in touch with her libido. The movie will probably…
Remember the Farrelly brothers? Makers of Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary? Known for crossing the line of good taste and making fun of the differently abled, but with a sufficiently sweet streak that they could be forgiven for such? Kinda popular until Trey Parker and Matt Stone…
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into Hungary and listen to a song that supposedly causes people to kill themselves, along comes Gloomy Sunday. This tragic romance is elegant, picturesque, sensuous and rather stilted, but three out of four makes for reasonable enough viewing. As long…
