Sweet, crazy and tinged with sadness, Michel Gondry’s new feature, The Science of Sleep, is a wondrous concoction. The tricksy romantic narrative–in which Gael García Bernal plays a hapless, Chaplinesque mad man–may be reminiscent of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which Gondry directed from Charlie Kaufman’s script. The look,…
Anyone who wants to start feeling good about war again–And hey, pilgrim, isn’t it about time?–might do well to take in Flyboys. In this elaborate, computer-generated fantasy, the plucky volunteer pilots of the Lafayette Escadrille are once more cast as “knights of the sky,” dashing young Americans who soar aloft…
The Big Animal (Milestone) It’s a simple yet lesser known law of comedy: Camels are always funny. There are the jaws that drool and chew side to side, the front legs that move like a human’s, the humps — but mostly it’s the eyes: There’s something of Buddha in a…
According to its publicity, bringing Robert Penn Warren’s 1946 novel All the King’s Men to the screen again has always been “a cherished dream” of executive producer James Carville–suggesting a lurking sense of payback frustration with the insubstantial legacy of the real populist Southerner Carville himself helped to elect president…
Fans of Hong Kong cinema have been anticipating Jet Li’s Fearless all year, if not longer. The star is arguably the best in the business at combining major ass-kicking with actual acting; the director is Ronny Yu, known here for over-the-top horror sequels but more familiar to genre fans as…
The Proposition (First Look) There’s an old saying about Ginger Rogers, who did everything Fred Astaire did–but backwards and in heels. This Australian western seems to be saying something similar about gritty American westerns: You think that’s hard? Try living in the Outback. The Proposition mucks about in dust, blood,…
Directed by Brian De Palma from the novel by neo-noirist James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia is a true-crime policier unfolding in late-’40s Los Angeles somewhere between the neighborhoods of Chinatown and Mulholland Drive. The premise involves one of L.A.’s most notorious unsolved homicides. In early 1947, the naked corpse of…
The Rock”–formerly known as “Flex Kavana” and, a bit later, as “Rocky Maivia”–was a practicing actor long before he turned to movies and started taking down $12 million paychecks. The happily deluded throngs who used to watch him lay signature moves such as the People’s Elbow or the ominously named…
Those twentysomethings, poor dears, can never catch a break in the movies. First this maligned generation is told, in countless gritty indies and perky studio comedies, that they’re rowing through life without oars. Now, director Tony Goldwyn’s admirably understated handling of dispiritingly slender material suggests that if you’re pushing 30,…
I Am a Sex Addict (IFC) Caveh Zahedi has made a movie of our times — a strange mix of self-absorption, shamelessness in the pursuit of fame, and sex. Most shocking of all is that it works. Part fiction and documentary, confessional and comedy, the film traces the history of…
If Superman Returns attempted to resurrect the Man of Steel as mythic hero, the season’s other Superman movie wants to disabuse us of any such childish illusions. Glamorously adult, Hollywoodland purports to part the veil on the circumstances by which George Reeves, the actor who embodied the superhero on ’50s…
A number of pregnant mysteries arise with the new remake of Robin Hardy’s 1973 cult-remembered genre work–namely, what’s in this kind of malarkey for gender combat provocateur Neil LaBute, and why was such a high-profile film tossed into theaters last Friday without letting critics see it first? The two simple…
United 93 (Universal) A suggestion to those who’ve put off watching the year’s most wrenching and essential film: Before rolling the feature, first watch the documentary in which the families of those who died on the plane give the filmmakers their blessing, without reservation. If the mother, father, and sister…
By the time Trust the Man opens this weekend, it will have been nearly a year since it debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it was picked up for distribution by Fox Searchlight. Forget that it’s a year old; this thing tastes a good decade past its expiration…
Another Gay Movie Directed by Todd Stephens. Screenplay by Stephens, based on a story by Stephens and Tim Kaltenecker. Starring Michael Carbonaro, Jonah Blechman, Jonathan Chase and Mitch Morris. Opens Friday. A blow-by-blow remake of American Pie, albeit with more gerbil sex play, Todd Stephens’ Another Gay Movie follows four…
Arrested Development: Season Three (Fox) The final collection of Arrested Development discs feels sadly incomplete: only 13 episodes this time, the result of Fox’s inability to attract viewers to one of TV’s greatest comedies and the network’s unwillingness to give it a full farewell. But none of that diminishes the…
Low, which is to say no, expectations can be a wonderful thing; expect nothing, and maybe you’ll get that little outta-nowhere sumpin’-sumpin’ that turns an otherwise unfulfilling occurrence into a vaguely rewarding experience. It’s not like Invincible boasts the most promising of credentials: a first-time filmmaker (Ericson Core, the cinematographer…
One of the weakest and most ridiculous aspects of popular culture is its narcissistic now-ness. There’s often no then or later, and without past experience or the messy knowledge of life, modern entertainment media often seems poached in a neurotic teenage brainpan, entranced with its own ignorant tunnel vision. A…
Jason Lethcoe’s book Amazing Adventures From Zoom’s Academy doesn’t particularly wow the reader with its prose, but the concept is solid–basically, Harry Potter with superheroes rather than wizards. The heroine, Summer Jones, is an awkward 13-year-old tomboy with a goofy father named Jasper who likes to tinker with home appliances…
Veronica Mars: The Complete Second Season (Warner Bros.) Any concept along the lines of “high school hottie solves crimes” is bound to make for watchable TV, but who would have expected this? Equal parts 90210 teen soap, murder mystery, and comedy, Veronica Mars pulls you in with its sharp writing,…
If, at this remove, we can imagine Vienna in the late 1890s, we behold a great imperial capital in ferment. Gustav Mahler is not only reinventing the harmonic structure of serious music, he is getting his head seriously shrunk by Sigmund Freud. Arnold Schoenberg takes painting lessons from the eroticist…
Awinning tale of sex, real estate and more or less immaculate conception, Quinceañera, as you might expect from a white-made drama about Latino life in Los Angeles’ Echo Park, threatens at first blush to be all about a pregnant teenager and a prodigal cholo in the ‘hood. Yet this saucy,…
