The practice of motion-picture production in China is clearly in flux. While films have long emanated from government studios, political changes in the past decade or so have led to co-productions with other countries — Farewell My Concubine (with Hong Kong — then a British territory), Dr. Bethune (with Canada…
As any Klump family member can tell you, this has been a hot summer for black comedians. New movies starring Martin Lawrence, the Wayans brothers, and Eddie Murphy have already pulled down more than $300 million at the box office, and by the time Chris Rock’s remake of Heaven Can…
For the first half hour or so of John Waters’ latest film, Cecil B. Demented, I found myself reflexively evaluating it in terms of the guidelines we all — critics as well as audiences — have been trained to follow: “This isn’t going to make much money, because it’s not…
In a perfect world, any documentary about televangelists narrated by RuPaul and a couple of sock puppets would be hailed as the conceptual masterpiece of the year. Alas, those stodgy Academy voters just don’t understand cross-dressers, religious broadcasting, or foot warmers made to look like dogs. And so the best…
Make no mistake: The Cell is, easily, the most unforgettable film of a pedestrian, forgettable summer. You will walk out of the theater and be grateful for the light and the heat; it is, in places, a rather chilling and claustrophobic film. In places, The Cell is also a rather…
Directed by Howard Deutch. Written by Vince McKewin. Starring Keanu Reeves, Gene Hackman, Brooke Langton, Orlando Jones, Jon Favreau, and Jack Warden. Opens Friday.
t would be the easiest thing in the world to write off But I’m a Cheerleader, the story of a teenager discovering her sexual identity through a program designed to repress it, as a Saturday Night Live sketch awkwardly inflated to feature length. But when you start looking deeper into…
Before we get into it, a few of life’s sorrowful inevitabilities: Friends will vanish; romantic love will deteriorate; family will freak; and, sooner or later, the matrix will come to claim your soul. No, no, not that matrix — not some silly, goopy sci-fi escape hatch — but the big,…
Murphy and Pryor. Skywalker and Kenobi. Amos and Zeppelin. Regardless of the creative universe, the maverick apprentice tends to stride off into territory beyond the edges of the master’s map. So it is with Alan Rudolph, whose career blossomed after serving as assistant director to Robert Altman on Nashville in…
There are many, many productive paths a bright, ambitious young fellow can pursue in America. He can, for instance, start a mediocre rock band and try to make music for beer commercials. He can also design a Web site to advertise Web sites about Web sites. Or there’s always the…
It’s a pleasure to say that Clint Eastwood reverses his recent downward slide –A Perfect World (1993), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), Absolute Power (1997), and True Crime (1999), each of which has seemed less satisfying than its predecessor–with Space Cowboys, his latest. It isn’t an especially profound film,…
To hell with PETA: They really should test producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s movies on animals before releasing them. Just unleashing them into theaters every few months seems so unhealthy, like spraying pesticide into the water supply or selling decaying fish to Chinese restaurants and calling it “pork.” Every few months, a…
Honestly now, have you, of late, found yourself enthralled by pleasing stimuli? Please, no nauseating responses like “Aromatherapy shifts my reality” or “After I get rolfed, my heart is more open to love.” Instead, think of the good, serendipitous stuff, the random intoxicants that bombard your subcutaneous organs. For example,…
Mike White, the writer and star of Chuck & Buck, has grown a little weary of all the intense scrutiny from writers who interview him for the film. But he’s sensible enough to know that it’s part of the press drill for a hot indie property. He also understands why…
The bewildering penchant of recent American movies for glorifying the lovable naïf, the perpetual adolescent, and the village idiot takes a strange new turn in Miguel Arteta’s dark comedy Chuck & Buck. Arteta’s hero, Buck O’Brien (Mike White), is a 27-year-old man-child who eats lollipops all day, takes refuge in…
For one moment–and that’s all you can stomach–really look at Eddie Murphy’s filmography. You will notice how his bad films (and most transcend that feeble definition, falling more often into the “wretched” category) far outweigh the good. You will see that those few good films–Murphy’s Holy Trinity of Funny: 48…
It’s a premise that’s bound to succeed. A young man living on the edge is trying to pull it all together while frequenting 12-step programs and holding down a job that seems calculated to drive him insane. Searching for a way out, he makes contact with a mysterious figure who…
Rather than asking if this senseless and expensive new film from wunderkind entertainer Robert Zemeckis is devoid of merit (it is), or “worth seeing” (it isn’t), we should instead take the movie’s title–What Lies Beneath–as a direct question. Indeed, what does lie beneath? Possible answers include: a glaringly improbable shift…
Twelve hours after seeing Loser, the only thing I could remember about it was Alan Cumming’s performance of “Willkommen” from the 1998 Broadway production of Cabaret–which isn’t technically even in the movie, since the scene is obviously spliced in to make it appear as though the film’s two would-be lovebirds…
In Bryan Singer’s last movie, 1998’s Apt Pupil, Ian McKellen portrayed a Nazi war criminal hiding out in the suburbs, passing himself off as an ordinary old man crouching behind drawn blinds. In Singer’s new movie, X-Men, McKellen plays Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, the son of Jews murdered in Auschwitz. In…
It has taken moviemakers and, more crucially, foot-dragging movie investors almost a decade to catch up with rave culture–the heady mix of secret warehouses, electronic music, designer drugs, and ecstatic dancing that has come to define the yearning and the restlessness of a generation. But now, the 5 a.m. faithful…
Kenneth Branagh’s latest adaptation of Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, is not swooningly wonderful; rather, it is simply quite nice. Kindly note the distinction: If the movie were a dinner guest, it would not be the brash charmer who transforms your party into a par-tay; it would be the crisply attired…
