It won’t ruin anyone’s experience of 3-Iron, the new film by Korean writer-director Kim Ki-duk, to reveal that it closes with a single epigraph: “It’s hard to tell that the world we live in is either reality or a dream.” Presumably, the correct translation would replace “that” with “whether”; even…
Jane Fonda comes from a good Hollywood family and used to be a pretty fair actress herself. Klute, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and Coming Home were three of the better films of their time. So, after getting a look at herself in her first movie in 15 years, La…
Much of Crash, an L.A.-stories portmanteau about the suffocating embrace of racism, is hard to watch, harder still to listen to. Its characters–the creations of co-writer and director Paul Haggis but also of people who live next door and perhaps even inside of you–say and do things they shouldn’t. Theirs…
Whatever you do, don’t accuse Ridley Scott of turning his back on a fight. Doesn’t matter if it’s slimy-fanged space aliens attacking Sigourney Weaver, Roman slaves in tough against hungry lions down at the Coliseum or American GIs going at it with Somali insurgents. Sir Ridley is always happy to…
Author Douglas Adams died at age 49 on May 11, 2001, of a heart attack suffered during a workout at a Santa Barbara, California, gym. His biographer, M.J. Simpson, blamed Adams’ demise in part on his unending battle to get The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on a big screen,…
Alex Gibney’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a thoroughly professional, frequently spectacular piece of muckraking. But any American who hopes to watch this portrait of unfettered corporate greed, cynical power-lust and outrageous deception without going postal about an hour into the thing would do well to bring…
Among the many mysteries surrounding The Interpreter is the one that finds Sydney Pollack heralded as a major American director, a maker of Serious and Important Movies. His filmography, marked by mawkish mediocrities (Out of Africa, as vibrant as a coffee-table book; The Way We Were, its romance as plausible…
“No more soccer!” declares small-time thug Sing (writer-director-star Stephen Chow) as he vigorously stomps on a child’s ball. In the context of Kung Fu Hustle, it’s a pathetic attempt by Sing to make himself look tough. The larger signal, however, is to followers of Chow’s work–it’s a direct reference to…
Of the 30 or so films playing the USA Film Festival, now celebrating its 35th anniversary, only one has never been shown to an audience before: former D magazine contributor Jeff Bowden’s directorial debut, Dirt, which documents a season of dirt-track racing at the Devil’s Bowl Speedway in Mesquite. Shot…
Matthew Parkhill’s Dot the I is the kind of tricked-up mental exercise that may intrigue the most impressionable film school students and a philosophy major here and there. But anyone who’s gotten through sophomore year without declaring him the next great thinker of the Western Hemisphere is more likely to…
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that your moviegoing family is absolutely up to date on every major release this year. Not a Friday goes by that you don’t go see something new. Then you look in the paper and see that the only major release coming up this…
If nothing else, give Dana Brown credit for enthusiasm. A documentary filmmaker in name only, he is really the camera- and microphone-equipped president of several booster clubs–among them what might be called the International Society of Beach Bums and, thanks to his latest exercise in hero worship, the Dune Buggy…
Last year, the Simmons family of Needham, Massachusetts, just outside Boston, sent Christmas cards for the first time in more than 20 years. “We send out Xmas cards about as often as the Red Sox win the World Series,” the card very cleverly proclaimed. This movie is for them. In…
When was the last time you walked out of a theater feeling shell-shocked, saying to anyone who would listen, in language more profane, “Dude, that was some seriously messed-up stuff”? Not your garden-variety messed-up stuff, mind you, like in Saw. Not the messed-up revelations of political docs. We’re talking the…
Sahara is a stunning piece of work–stunningly inept, stunningly incoherent, stunningly awful in every single way imaginable. How this didn’t go direct to video or cable or airplane or bootleg is unfathomable. Actually, that’s not entirely true. It gets a proper blockbuster theatrical release through Paramount Pictures because its director,…
If nothing else, Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City, co-directed with Frank Miller (and Quentin Tarantino, for a few seconds), will be remembered as the most faithful comic-book adaptation ever put on film (or high-def video anyway). Rodriguez uses Miller’s hyper-noir serial, published over a 10-year period, as storyboards for the movie–his…
Does the world really need a new film from Woody Allen every single year? Yes, he is one of America’s great auteurs. Yes, he’s responsible for some very fine movies, many of them comedies (Annie Hall), several of them tragedies (Crimes and Misdemeanors, Another Woman) and some hovering in that…
“Better than I thought it’d be” was the refrain repeated by those exiting the preview screening of Guess Who, which doesn’t mean much–freebie audiences expect nothing and usually receive it. But in this case, it neatly summed up the experience of catching Ashton Kutcher in a part once played by…
Damian Cunningham has the face of an angel–calm and cool blue eyes perched above freckled cheeks and a benevolent grin–which is only appropriate for a 7-year-old boy who speaks with the late, great saints, among them Peter, Joseph, Claire and, of course, Francis of Assisi. Damian sees dead people, all…
Before I walked out the door to see Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, a colleague sneered, “Why do you even bother with that shit?” It’s a question one’s tempted to ask of its star, Sandra Bullock, as well. (Surely, our answers would be the same: The paycheck, pal.) Hers…
Despite the sunshine of the Stalin years and the carefree frolic of the oligarchs, the words “Russia” and “romantic comedy” don’t exactly come skipping off the tongue in perfect harmony. But if we can believe co-directors Olga Stolpovskaya and Dmitry Troitsky, a welcome spirit of playfulness–or the brave effort to…
Most contemporary thrillers aren’t concerned with moral dilemmas; the emphasis is on action and intrigue. The Israeli film Walk on Water–which, conveniently for American audiences, is primarily in English (the rest is Hebrew and German with English subtitles)–not only raises questions about right and wrong, but also addresses issues of…
