If nothing else, give French actor Yvan Attal credit for his faith in domestic bliss. At a time when matrimony has a shorter life span than mayonnaise, Attal has sought to mingle the joys and traumas of his own marriage (to actress Charlotte Gainsbourg) with his piquant views on the…
It’s not exactly a good sign when a movie starring Tim Allen, Christian Slater and Richard Dreyfuss gets dumped into one or two art-house theaters after a couple of years on the shelf. Even if none of them is a guaranteed box-office draw, you’d think all three should be enough…
The advent of digital filmmaking has been essentially a good thing, allowing cameras to go places their larger, celluloid-spooling cousins cannot, generally requiring less specialized lighting and, above all, making it affordable to put together a film while maxing out only one credit card. Sure, for every The Celebration you…
Read My Lips (Sur Mes Lévres) puts forth the fascinating and heretofore unexamined theory that being deaf offers its estimable rewards. It allows one the chance to tune out the world, to ignore everything and everyone. To the deaf, chaos can feel like the soothing calm, and madness comes with…
Not much has changed in the 11 years since Mike Myers used the first Wayne’s World movies as a personal launchpad, only tipping his James Bond-spoofing Austin Powers hand when he was strong enough at the box office to reap the rewards of his licensed characters. Now those spy-movie send-ups–the…
A film that posits a world in which giant fake-looking anthropomorphic bears walk among us without people noticing that they look any different from other humans, and a select group of them have been the biggest country-rock band in this alternate-reality world for many years (songs actually penned by John…
After endless failed relationships, a middle-aged exterminator and jazz musician (Jeffrey Tambor) begins to think that maybe he’s gay. On his very first attempt to pick someone up at a gay bar, however, he meets a beautiful divorcee (Jill Clayburgh) whose recent love life has been equally unsatisfying. The two…
During the last weeks before the fall of Saigon, tens of thousands of South Vietnamese, fearful of NVA recriminations, fled the country for the United States, where they were held in relocation camps until American sponsors could be found. First-time director Timothy Linh Bui–who co-wrote and co-produced his brother Tony’s…
Think of it as Todd Solondz light–loads of dysfunction but, thankfully, none of the perversion. In fact, despite deep-seated neuroses, occasionally inappropriate behavior and a propensity for unhealthy relationships, the four females who are the Marks family are a fairly benevolent lot. As observed by writer-director Nicole Holofcener, the characters…
On the first day (of opening weekend), the lord said, “Let there be, like, this year’s Evolution or sumpin’, only with more hope for significant box-office returns,” and there is, and it is called Eight Legged Freaks, and it is good. The silly title needs a hyphen in the compound…
Of all the A-list men playing dedicated authority figures, Star Wars alums Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson remain among the most amusing and pleasing, which is why K-19: The Widowmaker glides along engagingly rather than sinking. In many ways it’s just another cramped, dank submarine movie–bells, whistles, leaks, danger-danger!–but well-established…
It took the creative giants behind MIIB (a.k.a. Men in Black II) five years to come up with a disappointingly flat and uninspired sequel that not only treads familiar ground but does so with far less pizzazz than the original. It took the forces behind Stuart Little 2 a mere…
Joe Versus the Volcano ran on cable last week, and contained within that misguided, unmemorable film was a small scene that only now resonates. Tom Hanks, who believes he has not long to live, emerges from a doctor’s office wearing a fedora too small for his head and a trench…
If there’s any truth to reincarnation, the spirit of Napoleon may walk among us today. It’s not unreasonable to conjecture that he has taken up residence in Bill Gates or Joel Silver, but–perhaps more likely–the little conqueror with the big hat has fragmented and landed in the bodies of countless…
For centuries, Western philosophies have interpreted the dragon as a symbol of explosive violence, and, frankly, that’s rather one-sided. By (Saint) George, there has existed a notion that the basilisk is always bad, born to be slain. However, there’s a wide spectrum between Sirrush and Smaug, representing everything from our…
It’s daunting to hear that John Sayles’ new film, Sunshine State, is almost two and a half hours long and mostly consists of calm conversations. Don’t be deterred or you’ll miss out on a study of character, class and changing times that puts Robert Altman’s stodgy Gosford Park to shame…
Like a jawbreaker that changes color every few seconds you suck it, MIIB: Men in Black II delivers a quick buzz, lots of stuff to look at and a totally non-nutritious joy that can only be attained with the aid of artificial flavorings and Yellow #5. It’s the perfect summer…
In her recent book, Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, journalist Rachel Simmons hits a very topical nail squarely on its very sore head. Coining the term “relational aggression,” she employs several case studies to buttress the obvious but significant theory that modern girls are extremely…
It has been 80 years since the adventurous son of a Michigan iron miner trained a silent-movie camera on the everyday life of an “Eskimo” family in the Canadian Arctic and virtually invented documentary filmmaking. Through the decades, Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North has attracted its share of criticism–Flaherty…
Talk about trading down: Adam Sandler now stands in for Gary Cooper, Winona Ryder for Jean Arthur, screenwriter Tim Herlihy (The Waterboy, Billy Madison) for Robert Riskin (It Happened One Night, Meet John Doe), director Steven Brill (Little Nicky) for the immortal Frank Capra. The mind reels at the possibilities…
There are a few dubious claims affecting the popular perception of the life and death of Napoleon Bonaparte. Despite the legend, he wasn’t, at 5-foot-6, particularly short. He was also more than just the sturdy product of military training at Brienne and Paris, considering that his Corsican mother adamantly disciplined…
Pretend Derek Jacobi is John Cleese, imagine it’s all but a daft and cruel joke, and you will find Paul Cox’s film tolerable; if you can’t, you will find it unbearable. The dancer, a startlingly handsome man who appears in photos like a silent-movie star begging to speak and shout,…
