Of all the A-list men playing dedicated authority figures, Star Wars alums Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson remain among the most amusing and pleasing, which is why K-19: The Widowmaker glides along engagingly rather than sinking. In many ways it’s just another cramped, dank submarine movie–bells, whistles, leaks, danger-danger!–but well-established…
It took the creative giants behind MIIB (a.k.a. Men in Black II) five years to come up with a disappointingly flat and uninspired sequel that not only treads familiar ground but does so with far less pizzazz than the original. It took the forces behind Stuart Little 2 a mere…
Joe Versus the Volcano ran on cable last week, and contained within that misguided, unmemorable film was a small scene that only now resonates. Tom Hanks, who believes he has not long to live, emerges from a doctor’s office wearing a fedora too small for his head and a trench…
If there’s any truth to reincarnation, the spirit of Napoleon may walk among us today. It’s not unreasonable to conjecture that he has taken up residence in Bill Gates or Joel Silver, but–perhaps more likely–the little conqueror with the big hat has fragmented and landed in the bodies of countless…
For centuries, Western philosophies have interpreted the dragon as a symbol of explosive violence, and, frankly, that’s rather one-sided. By (Saint) George, there has existed a notion that the basilisk is always bad, born to be slain. However, there’s a wide spectrum between Sirrush and Smaug, representing everything from our…
It’s daunting to hear that John Sayles’ new film, Sunshine State, is almost two and a half hours long and mostly consists of calm conversations. Don’t be deterred or you’ll miss out on a study of character, class and changing times that puts Robert Altman’s stodgy Gosford Park to shame…
Like a jawbreaker that changes color every few seconds you suck it, MIIB: Men in Black II delivers a quick buzz, lots of stuff to look at and a totally non-nutritious joy that can only be attained with the aid of artificial flavorings and Yellow #5. It’s the perfect summer…
In her recent book, Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, journalist Rachel Simmons hits a very topical nail squarely on its very sore head. Coining the term “relational aggression,” she employs several case studies to buttress the obvious but significant theory that modern girls are extremely…
It has been 80 years since the adventurous son of a Michigan iron miner trained a silent-movie camera on the everyday life of an “Eskimo” family in the Canadian Arctic and virtually invented documentary filmmaking. Through the decades, Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North has attracted its share of criticism–Flaherty…
Talk about trading down: Adam Sandler now stands in for Gary Cooper, Winona Ryder for Jean Arthur, screenwriter Tim Herlihy (The Waterboy, Billy Madison) for Robert Riskin (It Happened One Night, Meet John Doe), director Steven Brill (Little Nicky) for the immortal Frank Capra. The mind reels at the possibilities…
There are a few dubious claims affecting the popular perception of the life and death of Napoleon Bonaparte. Despite the legend, he wasn’t, at 5-foot-6, particularly short. He was also more than just the sturdy product of military training at Brienne and Paris, considering that his Corsican mother adamantly disciplined…
Pretend Derek Jacobi is John Cleese, imagine it’s all but a daft and cruel joke, and you will find Paul Cox’s film tolerable; if you can’t, you will find it unbearable. The dancer, a startlingly handsome man who appears in photos like a silent-movie star begging to speak and shout,…
An evil industrialist (voice of Paul Sorvino) intends to knock down the neighborhood in which Arnold (Spencer Klein), the kid with the football-shaped head, and his friends happily reside. Needless to say, Arnold must fight the clock to thwart this catastrophe. In the ’80s, animator Craig Bartlett introduced Arnold in…
Clearly, director Malcolm Clark and writer Sean Kanan (an actor by day, not a writer, and no friggin’ duh) wanted to adapt J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, like thousands of other would-bes and wannabes before them. When they figured out that wasn’t going to happen, they instead…
Naked emotion is a tricky thing to sell, especially in semiautobiographical films about confused mama’s boys gradually learning that life exists beyond the control of their lens. The latter two of this cut’s three hours richly expand upon the romantic longing (for Agnese Nano young, Brigitte Fossey older) and deliver…
Steven Spielberg just might turn into a great director if only he’d stop sabotaging his movies. For the second time in as many films, he demolishes his product with a third act that renders all that’s come before it void. It’s as though Minority Report, set in a near future…
It’s easy to love Robin Tunney–she’s pretty, and she can act–but it gets harder and harder to understand her choices. The Craft was a good call, and undoubtedly furthered her options, as it did for co-stars Neve Campbell and Fairuza Balk. But many of her parts since that 1996 film…
Iranian director Majid Majidi received a mantelful of awards, was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film and got some American attention for his 1997 feature Children of Heaven, the simple story of a little boy who loses a pair of shoes and goes to great lengths to keep…
If it’s possible for a film to be simultaneously ambitious and banal, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys is it. There’s little here we haven’t seen repeatedly in some form or another–growing up Catholic is popular fodder for filmmakers, as is growing up in the American South, usually in a…
Naked emotion is a tricky thing to sell, especially in semiautobiographical films about confused mama’s boys gradually learning that life exists beyond the control of their lens. The latter two of this cut’s three hours richly expand upon the romantic longing (for Agnese Nano young, Brigitte Fossey older) and deliver…
This thoughtful and somewhat languid adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s 1904 play finds its beauty in the heady performance of Charlotte Rampling as Lyubov, childlike matriarch of a fast-fading period of social polarity. Returning from a long-term Paris retreat to her Russian estate and its complex web of disparate characters, not…
The challenge faced here by writer-director Robert Guédiguian (Charge!) is to keep his cheap melodrama from curdling his insightful societal appraisal. Michèle (Ariane Ascaride) is a dutiful young grandmother in Marseille, working nights packing fish to support her useless husband, Claude (Pierre Banderet), her junkie-prostitute daughter Fiona (Julie-Marie Parmentier) and…
