Wonder Showzen: Season One (MTV) On the surface, the way this MTV2 puppetfest explores adult concepts through a kiddie-show format seems fresh as a Nantucket limerick. But Wonder Showzen’s execution is so bold and frankly hilarious that it feels wholly new. Whether it’s exploring diversity with a forbidden homosexual love…
The brain is a beguiling thing. One evening, you’re talking to a friend on the phone. Sometime later, you find yourself in a subway car, passing through an urban landscape. You don’t recognize the buildings, the neighborhood or the city. Don’t know why you’re on the train. Don’t even know…
Given Inside Man’s bullpen (director Spike Lee, stars Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster), moment in political history and advertising, you could be forgiven for anticipating some kind of socially relevant, perhaps even politically volatile dramatic smash-up–something with teeth, ambition, a functioning cerebrum and a lusty relationship with reality. But those…
As scientific advances have made forensic DNA matching a reality, a new field has emerged in criminal justice: exoneration. In cases where relevant biological evidence has been preserved, innocent inmates who’ve been serving time for decades suddenly have cause for hope. If a prisoner can manage to get legal help,…
There probably aren’t that many movie stars capable of retaining their charisma after a stroke has rendered them nigh-incoherent. But based on Illusion, Kirk Douglas doesn’t seem to have lost a step. He still has that intensity he always had, and even though he’s at the stage of his career…
It can’t be easy making films about war. It’s so inherently dramatic that, as a setting for art, it’s overdetermined; it drips with meaning even before the first scenes are set. And so much has been said already: War is hell. War is noble. War is surreal. War is absurd,…
The posters for V for Vendetta read “An uncompromising vision of the future from the creators of The Matrix trilogy.” Uncompromising? It simply isn’t possible to translate Alan Moore’s multilayered comic-book masterpiece into a two-hour movie without making cuts that oversimplify, and it’s certainly not feasible to expect producer Joel…
John Fante’s novel Ask the Dust, published in 1939 and all but forgotten till its 1980 reissue with a Charles Bukowski foreword, is very much a work of thinly veiled autobiography; only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. Its protagonist, a struggling writer named Arturo Bandini, shared…
A gritty portrait of ghetto life in contemporary South Africa, Tsotsi packs an unexpected emotional wallop. Gavin Hood’s film tells a story of violence and redemption that’s even more remarkable when you consider that neither of the lead performers had ever acted in a movie previously. It’s little wonder that…
Hollywood’s a sucker for cross-dressing. When the American Film Institute chose the 100 greatest comedies of all time, a pair of drag films–Some Like It Hot and Tootsie–earned the top two slots. From Operation Petticoat to White Chicks, slapping falsies on a dude is the fast road to Chuckletown. Women…
The Boys of Baraka, a fine documentary about a group of inner-city, at-risk boys who travel to Kenya to attend a special school, comes very close to greatness. For over an hour, the film is a sharp and blazing account of how boys with multiple challenges and little hope for…
So wait. It’s a movie about the longest criminal trial in U.S. history, it’s directed by the legendary Sidney Lumet, and it stars…Vin Diesel in a wig? In a role originally intended for Joe Pesci? Can Lumet be serious? Actually, no. The characters may be based on real people, with…
Who knows? Maybe he developed writer’s block. Or joined Up With People. Or dropped dead from shock the day Bush got re-elected. In any event, the notorious Northern California serial killer who called himself, rather grandiosely, the Zodiac, hasn’t fired off a single letter to the editor since April 1978…
Through the Fire (Disney) He’s averaging just nine points in his second season for the Portland Trail Blazers, but considering where he came from and what he’s overcome, Sebastian Telfair is doing just fine, thank you. Jonathan Hock’s fascinating documentary takes us back to the young New York basketball legend’s…
The Tenants (Sony) Fifteen seconds into the video for “Nuthin but a G Thang,” it was obvious that Snoop Dogg had charisma to spare. More than a decade later, with his performance as ’70s-era radical author Willie Spearmint, it’s official: The man can act. Snoop’s shambling, searing performance is just…
A star who turned into a black hole somewhere between the release of, oh, The Wedding Planner and Sahara (or How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Two for the Money–really, where to draw the line?), Matthew McConaughey is better-known of late for shooting tequila with Oprah and…
From the stars of Elf, here’s a new drama about depression and family baggage! Might not want to bring the kids to this one, lest they wonder why Buddy the Elf’s girlfriend is drowning a kitten and deliberately slamming her fingers in cabinet drawers. On the other hand, the two…
If you plan to see The Libertine, an artful and brooding period piece about a scandalously debauched earl of the English Restoration, a few words of advice before you leave: Take a peek at the sun. Drink in some fresh air. Consider bidding goodbye to the majority of the color…
If the Confederacy had won the Civil War, would blacks still be enslaved? Would women vote? Would the United States have colluded with Hitler–or at least pledged non-interference? If the Emancipation Proclamation had been merely a rhetorical gesture from a President who would soon be exiled to Canada (after being…
Here’s the first thing that’s audacious about What the Bleep!?: Down the Rabbit Hole, the second installment in what has become a franchise of oversimplified science, outlandish speculation and woo-woo spirituality: It’s not a sequel. It’s a revision. Shamelessly, Rabbit Hole uses extensive footage from the first film, including the…
Anyone who remembers the 1977 Wes Craven film The Hills Have Eyes, which was and remains a piece of Milwaukee-beer shit, remembers it because A) they had a memorable fuck-or-puke night at the aging neighborhood drive-in; B) Michael Berryman’s uniquely hairless mug, which glared from the video store horror sections…
The world premiere of Dave Chappelle’s Block Party at the Toronto International Film Festival last September had the vibe of a sold-out concert–all those spotlights beaming to and fro in front of a venerable old theater, all that pushing and shoving for the best seats, all those celebs in the…
