While virtually no one in this country foresaw the American disaster in Vietnam, the late British writer Graham Greene glimpsed it with astonishing clarity a decade before the first U.S. “adviser” set foot on Vietnamese soil. Greene’s 1955 novel The Quiet American, which has now been made into a disturbing…
If nothing else, because there’s nothing else to this movie, Shanghai Knights allows Jackie Chan, he of halting dialogue and poetic movement, to pay direct homage to his idols. He hangs from the arms of Big Ben, dangling off the stories-tall clock like Harold Lloyd in 1923’s Safety First; he…
Astaire & Rogers. Hepburn & Tracy. Heck, Ball & Arnaz, Houston & Washington or Vardalos & Corbett. Over the decades, Hollywood has proven that its romantic comedies needn’t suck. But alas, they often do, as is the case with How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Clearly, bigwig co-producers…
Director Gary Hardwick’s first film, The Brothers, was a refreshing take on the single black man romantic comedy, offering a surprisingly mature perspective full of depth and well-rounded characters without resorting to the time-honored stereotypes of black man as player and black woman as ball-busting bitch. Hardwick wrote the script…
Director Roger Donaldson was part of a wave of Australian talent who went Hollywood in the ’80s, but he hasn’t fared as well here as colleagues like Peter Weir, Phillip Noyce and George Miller. His biggest hit was probably Cocktail, and his best American film was either Species or No…
First off, make no mistake: Biker Boyz is not, and has no intentions of being, The Fast and the Furious on two wheels, which will be considered a serious shame by the 12- to 12-year-old demographic who were hoping to chug a little more Diesel fuel till the official sequel’s…
There are enough good scenes within the 94 minutes of The Guru to make an entertaining coming-attractions trailer. Wait, that’s unfair. Such previews are only one minute long. It’s simplistic and snarky to say there are only 60 seconds of fun to be found in this “Bollywood-meets-Hollywood” romantic comedy. I’m…
Hitler as artist…Hitler as artist…Damn. So much for the ol’ “summarize plot, tease overpaid actors, pontificate wildly” formula. Reviewing Max–about the wonder years of Der Führer (Noah Taylor) and his eponymous, fictional Jewish benefactor Max Rothman (John Cusack)–looks to be something of a task. Set in 1918 Munich, this confident…
Once upon a time, in the town of Darkness Falls… “Wait,” you’re probably saying to yourself, “Darkness Falls is the name of the town?” Yes. Yes, it is. And it’s haunted by an evil tooth fairy. Are you sure you want to know more? OK, good. Because once you get…
Ever since Amores Perros burst onto the international scene two years ago, Latin American cinema has been experiencing one of the most fertile periods in its history. Encompassing such works as Alfonso Cuaron’s Y Tu Mamá También and Walter Salles’ Behind the Sun, these socially conscious, frequently brutal portraits of…
Compiled in the cold light of day, the sum of Chuck Barris’ contributions to American culture are the Top 40 ditty “Palisades Park,” which he wrote in 1962, and his discovery, a few years later, that many people are willing to make complete fools of themselves in front of a…
It all begins with the word. “I believe I may have a first sentence,” murmurs Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman, really) to her husband, Leonard (Stephen Dillane), commencing labor on the author’s fourth novel, Mrs. Dalloway. The year is 1921, but skillfully intercut segments illustrate that the book’s heady emotional content…
These are the dog days of January, the poor put-upon month used by studios as a dumping ground for product considered too lethally toxic for release during those real moviegoing months–December, say, when audiences are buzzed on two weeks of vacation and award-contenders do their Oscar striptease and reveal that…
Spike Lee’s adaptation of David Benioff’s 2001 novel The 25th Hour hews closely to the original tale, which the author has adapted in screenplay form: Montgomery Brogan, a working-class white boy who dreamed of being a New York City firefighter till he fell into the soft pile of easy money…
“Cops die daily, and they die bad,” barks manic police lieutenant Henry Oak (Ray Liotta) to undercover narcotics officer Nick Tellis (Jason Patric), revealing both his hardened ‘tude and a little confusion when it comes to adverbs. Welcome to Narc, Paramount Pictures’ bid for a gritty, post-Training Day dirty-cop thriller,…
Those who seek a polar opposite to Michael Caine’s kind-but-firm patriarch Dr. Wilbur Larch in The Cider House Rules will find it in Jim Broadbent’s horrid, one-eyed headmaster, Wackford Squeers, in the new adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby. Author John Irving cribbed extensively from Charles Dickens to create his delightful (and…
According to various unreliable sources on the Internet, Just Married co-stars Ashton Kutcher (forever to be known as the star of Dude, Where’s My Car?) and Brittany Murphy (who wears way too much scary makeup even when she isn’t playing mental patients who’ll never tell) are now actually planning to…
In all, a far better year than any in recent memory, so much so it feels impolite and irresponsible to choose a mere 10 best among the annum’s offerings. This list remained in flux till the last possible moment; five seconds ago it featured, among others, Signs, Full Frontal, Human…
It’s never a good sign when somewhere in the vicinity of half of my most memorable moviegoing experiences in a given year come from reissues of films at least three decades old. But there it is: In my memory banks, 2002 may well be remembered as the year of the…
There have been other films dealing with the Jewish ghettos during the Nazi occupation of Poland–some very good–but The Pianist, the latest feature from Roman Polanski, may be the best. Of course, it starts out with a huge advantage: The 69-year-old Polanski is probably the only working filmmaker to have…
Everything about Catch Me If You Can, the loosely based-on-fact tale of a teen-ager who swindled millions while posing as, among other things, a Pan Am pilot and doctor and lawyer, is breezy and easy to swallow. Its maker, Steven Spielberg, hasn’t had so much fun in two decades, since…
It’s been nearly three years since Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Perhaps it’s in the spirit of spreading things around that Spain has not nominated Almodóvar’s latest, Talk to Her, as their entry this year. Certainly it’s hard to imagine any…
