The praising of Hollywood summertime cinema is the pastime of pale critics who, come late July, start to wonder what the strange yellow orb is hanging in the sky. Hence the gallons of kind ink spilled over some of the season’s sequels, which shipped spoiled but were guzzled nonetheless by…
The last thing the Roman Catholic Church needs at this point is another exposé of its misdeeds. The shock of the pedophilia scandals and of the official cover-ups isn’t going away anytime soon, and when last we looked, the former bishop of the Phoenix Diocese was out on $45,000 bail…
Probably best known in this country for Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, French writer-director Claude Berri has also made numerous comedies in his career, many of them concerning the male species’ desire for companionship and often comical attempts to obtain it. His latest film, The Housekeeper (Une…
Freddy vs. Jason Directed by Ronny Yu. Written by Damian Shannon & Mark Swift, based on characters created by Wes Craven and Victor Miller. Starring Robert Englund, Ken Kirzinger, Monica Keena and Kelly Rowland. Opens Friday. Anyone not already a fan of A Nightmare on Elm Street dream-stalker Freddy Krueger…
Not to worry. Whenever summer machismo levels threaten to fall below mad-dog range, Hollywood invariably steps in to restore the status quo. Witness S.W.A.T. , a thoroughly unremarkable police action movie starring the magnetic Samuel L. Jackson as L.A.P.D. Sergeant Dan “Hondo” Harrelson, known affectionately to his men as “the…
“Simon must propose to me now,” exclaims pretty, simpleminded Rose (Rose Byrne), “before he meets somebody else or gets to know me better!” Welcome to the none-too-subtly-named Mortmain family, wherein foundering patriarch James (Bill Nighy)–for all symbolic definitions a dead writer–has been allowing his prolonged delusions of literary grandeur to…
Ah, Paris–City of Light, of Love, of Liver Damage and Lung Cancer. C’est formidable, non? Who in need of a posh vacation would turn down the opportunity to luxuriate in its finest hotels, to stuff oneself with sumptuous snails and to work on a terribly flat romantic drama called Le…
Military clerk Ray Elwood (Joaquin Phoenix) is something of a modern-day Sergeant Bilko. Anything you need, he can get. Any scam that’s possible, he’ll run. Never mind the bumbling Colonel Berman (Ed Harris) who ostensibly runs the unit–Elwood has him wrapped around his finger. There’s just one major difference between…
It’s a great pleasure to behold a chunk of art that’s both dank and fresh at the same time, and this appraisal perfectly fits the superb Dirty Pretty Things. The latest from veteran director Stephen Frears (Gumshoe, Prick Up Your Ears, High Fidelity) immediately transports the viewer to a subjective…
For a few minutes, at least, things don’t look so bad. Watching Ben Affleck swagger around as the thuggish title character of Gigli (“Rhymes with really,” he tells us, twice) is amusing for a bit. Affleck’s eminently qualified for the role, actually–that of a low-level hood pretending to be more…
From the lofty American vantage point, Mexico’s New Wave filmmakers have materialized like magic, the unexpected fruit of a renaissance that even many cinematically alert Yanqis hardly took the trouble to notice. Meanwhile, these new directors have fashioned a vivid style that combines, in various proportions, Latin American literary experimentation,…
Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald asserted that “there are no second acts in American lives.” But a horse named Seabiscuit and the three disparate men who shared his success would surely disagree. Based on the best-selling nonfiction book by Laura Hillenbrand, Seabiscuit recounts the true story of an unprepossessing, knobby-kneed horse…
Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over continues a fine tradition of turning third installments of film series into three-dimensional efforts; Amityville 3-D and Jaws 3-D exploited the gimmick long before Robert Rodriguez made clever use of the numeral signifying the milking to death of a franchise. But what Rodriguez lacks–say, Tony…
Everyone in his right mind loves Donald Sutherland. The spry 67-year-old boasts one of the most respectable acting résumés this side of Christopher Lee, so when he turns up in the documentary Fellini: I’m a Born Liar, he speaks with authority. Looking a bit dazed but generally enthusiastic, he waxes…
There’s magic in Northfork–both in the movie, by twin brothers Mark and Michael Polish, and in the Montana town soon to be drowned by the opening of the dam keeping the baptismal waters at bay. Northfork is a beguiling and bittersweet fantasy set in a netherworld where the living and…
There’s something to be said for a movie that’s honest enough to transcribe dialogue from the director’s mouth and incorporate it into the script. “Everybody start shooting at somebody!” yells Detective Mike Lowery (Will Smith) in the midst of a particular situation. Earlier, he gives the command to “drive that…
The heist-film genre, especially in recent years, practices the most blatant brand of cinematic swindle. It’s built on little more than pilfered plots and purloined characters, and the closer we inspect the goods the more we discover that the diamonds are phony, the bills counterfeit, the treasure utterly worthless. Who…
So much for those crackpot theories about flighty teen-agers and their short attention spans. For four long years now the bland pop star Mandy Moore has stuck in the brainpan of white adolescent America like a wad of bubblegum, and there’s no sign she will loosen her grip anytime soon…
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemenor LXG, as Fox refers to it, as though its the latest Lexus all-terrain vehiclewould have you think its the summer action movie with a brain; certainly, its literary allusions would have you believe it has visited more libraries than video-rental outlets. But the movie cant…
To prepare for reviewing Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, I did the obvious research: I watched Yellowbeard again. Yes, yes indeed–can’t do without Fairbanks as The Black Pirate and Flynn as Captain Blood. But when appraising a new comedic pirate adventure, it’s important to consider…
French director Francois Ozon doesn’t like to repeat himself. His last film, 8 Women, was a theatrical, rather campy piece of fluff starring la crème de la crème of contemporary Gallic actresses. Before that came Under the Sand, an unsettling drama about a woman (Charlotte Rampling, giving perhaps her finest…
If, in keeping with current fads, you seek movies featuring females kicking a bunch of ass, your appetite will be tended (and cultivated) at the multiplex all summer long. Wander into your local art-house, however, and you may find a fine, if somewhat challenging, import called The Legend of Suriyothai–billed…
