An 18th-century battle of the sexes that contains a radiant performance by Mira Sorvino as a princess whose complicated scheme to win the man she loves finds her juggling three suitors at once, all while disguised as a man. “I’m losing track of my own plot,” she giddily confesses at…
Ah, marriage. How sweet it is to discover, among all the recent wedding movies (Muriel’s, My Best Friend’s, Polish, Monsoon, etc.) that the institution’s still inspiring. Trés Greek writer and star Nia Vardalos has crafted here a worldly wise and very funny script, the better to play opposite decidedly non-Greek…
While it is surely difficult to concoct fresh, lively scenarios from worn elements (neurotic family, neurotic city, neurotic holiday), it is the filmmaker’s obligation, at the very least, to try. To her credit, veteran scribe Daniele Thompson clearly decided to take a very personal tack with her feature directorial debut,…
Arriving in theaters just ahead of a four-disc, outtakes-and-all boxed set and its Rhino Records-issued DVD companion, which comes crammed with two different commentary tracks and assorted effluvia, Martin Scorsese’s rockudrama withstands big-screen scrutiny some 24 years after its initial release. Meant to be seen large and played loud, this…
Women who exchange descriptions of their sexual encounters are certainly no more appealing than men who boast in locker rooms, but they seem to get more free passes. If, in the name of social candor, Jerry Springer can induce sisters to confess what they’ve done with barnyard animals and every…
It is possible to admire Frailty, directed by Texas-born actor Bill Paxton, without actually liking it. It’s not, strictly speaking, a gratifying movie: Too dependent on twists, both excruciatingly obvious and irritatingly ludicrous, it never fully satisfies; what you can’t guess you won’t see coming, because it’s too outrageous to…
Wending through the summaries of this year’s forthcoming blockbusters–dudes fight evil, chicks keep yanking up their trendy hip-huggers while fighting evil–it’s immediately refreshing to note a movie about furry freaks and saucy geeks whose primary goal is just to, you know, do it. In Human Nature, written by Charlie Kaufman…
One would scarcely imagine that the subject of gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews would have the makings of anything more than an exceedingly brief documentary. Leviticus 20:13, which says a man who “lies with a man” must be put to death, doesn’t offer much in the way of wiggle room,…
Directed by a focus group of 17-year-old boys (and their younger sisters, maybe) who titter at the mention of the word “punany” and guffaw at the sight of Selma Blair caught on a cock ring (surrounded, no less, by onlookers straight from a Village People audition), this is romantic comedy…
Ben Affleck is Gavin Banek, a slick attorney who can’t seem to get why people hate lawyers (and him) so much, even as he’s persuading a senile philanthropist to sign over power of appointment to his firm. Samuel L. Jackson is Doyle Gipson, an insurance telemarketer who attends Al-Anon meetings…
It’s never a good sign when a film’s star spends the entirety of the film in a coma; it’s worse when you begin to envy her condition. This direct-to-Beta bummer stars Mia Kirshner (Not Another Teen Movie) as Alicia, a lower-class student at an elite, upper-class North Carolina college that…
A callow, handsome, just-married professional finds himself attracted to his own sex when he meets another knowing, handsome, well-adjusted professional man. Sound familiar? No, it’s not Making Love from 1982, but a 1999 Spanish film directed by Gerardo Vera from a script by ngeles Gonzáles Sinde, starring Javier Bardem, Jordi…
The two slacker anti-heroes of Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También (And Your Mother, Too) (And Your Mother, Too) come furnished with all the usual glitches of late adolescence–raging hormones, impatient wanderlust, contempt for their elders and a jones for dope and beer. In fact, Julio (Gael García Bernal) and…
On September 10, Barry Sonnenfeld’s Big Trouble, a slight comic caper drenched in the sweltering muck of Miami, was a nagging chore to be tended to by film critics–one more mediocre multimillion-dollar all-star fiasco in which you can almost hear the filmmakers giggling behind the cameras. On September 11, Big…
Anybody who takes a second, sorrowful look at the charred rubble in lower Manhattan, the body counts in the West Bank or the brazen denials of Slobodan Milosevic will have to conclude that the brotherhood of man isn’t attracting many good recruits these days. Neither, for that matter, is the…
When it was first shown in rough-cut form two years ago, Bruce Weber’s documentary collage dealt primarily with his latest fetish object, college wrestling champion Peter Johnson, with occasional interludes about singer Frances Faye. Greatly re-edited, the film is now primarily about Faye, a lesbian hipster whose hard-driving style and…
Maryam Armin (Mariam Parris), a beautiful 16-year-old Iranian-born transplant so out of touch with her roots she prefers to be called Mary, has goo-goo eyes for a dim-bulb blond boy and dreams of becoming a newscaster–Jessica Savitch, actually. It’s November 1979, and Mary’s cousin, college student Ali (David Ackert), has…
Nothing happens and everything happens in Vittorio De Sica’s 1952 neorealist masterpiece; it’s a stark snapshot in which all is revealed about the “daily life of mankind,” as the director once offered by way of description. Umberto Domenico Ferrari (played by Carlo Battisti, a former professor in his sole big-screen…
When in doubt, the first-timer always turns to the numbingly familiar; in this case, co-directors Charles A. Addessi and William DeMeo lift damned near every mob-movie cliché they can lay their mitts on, going so far as to directly reference The Sopranos in one dreadfully flat joke–assuming, perhaps, that by…
With Panic Room, about the night Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her teen-age daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart) are home-invaded by a trio of burglars seeking hidden treasure, dyspeptic director David Fincher reveals himself as little more than a derivative visionary. For some, this will be enough: As mainstream, studio-financed movies…
Writer-director Larry Fessenden’s Wendigo takes its basic hook from the Native American myth of the Windigo, as it’s more frequently spelled. (You say Wendigo, I say Windigo–let’s call the whole thing off.) In its classic form, the Windigo is an evil spirit that possesses humans in the grip of hunger…
It’s readily apparent that Danny DeVito’s Death to Smoochy deals with a thoroughly debauched children’s television host (Robin Williams) who plots, amid much dark zaniness, to destroy his squeaky-clean successor (Edward Norton). It’s also quite easy to proclaim it the greatest movie ever made…about a singing vegan in a fuchsia…
