In the late ’50s, the head of a Brooklyn street gang (Stephen Dorff) must fight off attacks from a neighboring gang run by a junkie (Balthazar Getty), who is fronting for a drug dealer (Norman Reedus) fresh out of prison. At the same time, our hero’s brother (Brad Renfro) is…
Kicking around the film-fest circuit since 2000, this football film (soccer, actually, but we are in Scotland) is the quintessential sports film, complete with a ragtag team of small-timers sniffing the big time, an aging vet (Jackie McQuillan, played by feature-film newcomer Abby McCoist) seeking redemption on and off the…
There is more than a little of A Beautiful Mind’s John Nash in Tom Jericho, the hero of Michael Apted’s World War II-era romantic thriller. Both men are brilliant mathematicians, breaking military codes for the government while hovering on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Nash, of course, was a…
Poor William Randolph Hearst. The snapping dogs of Hollywood just won’t leave the guy alone. It’s been barely 60 years since a little epic called Citizen Kane portrayed the great newspaper tycoon as a ruthless dictator who degenerated into an emotional basket case, and already there’s more bad publicity in…
During the past half-century, countless filmmakers great and obscure have stood in serious debt to The Bicycle Thief. But, for my money, no one has borrowed so cleverly or shifted the weight of Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 masterpiece so gracefully as young Wang Xiaoshuai, whose Beijing Bicycle embodies the spirit…
The USA Film Festival, now in its 32nd year, may never again be the powerhouse fest it was at its inception–which is not to damn it, since there are several excellent offerings this year, but merely to accept a rather delightful reality. At its inception, there was no Sundance, no…
Written and directed by Bart Freundlich, this project deserves commendation for its psychological cogency and compassion, but it loses significant points for its lazy story and complacent delivery. Basically, we have a mannish boy named Cal (Billy Crudup, Almost Famous) who’s a modestly successful New York architect but decides to…
The thoroughly unlikable heroine of Stephen Herek’s cautionary comedy about striving and satisfaction is a vain, actressy TV blonde (vain, actressy Angelina Jolie) whose driving ambition is to move up from Seattle’s inane morning news-and-talk show to a major network’s inane morning news-and-talk show. But first, a typical Hollywood curveball…
A likable British convict (James Nesbitt) plans an ingenious escape that involves cons (Lennie James, Timothy Spall, Bill Nighy), the prison’s psychologist (Olivia Williams) and the staging of Nelson!, an awful musical biography of the well-known admiral written by their dotty, musical-comedy-obsessed warden (Christopher Plummer). Complications, of course, abound, with…
Once-renowned Iranian filmmaker Bahman Farmanara (Prince Ehtejab) had not made a picture since 1979, when his third film was banned by the post-Revolutionary Censor Board. Now, 23 years later–after moving to North America for a decade, then returning to Iran–he is back making movies. Smell of Camphor so closely mirrors…
The perpetrators of the new Sandra Bullock vehicle, Murder by Numbers, could be hauled in on any number of charges, including plagiarism and child abuse. But their most obvious crime is first-degree dullness, giving us a thriller without thrills and a mystery devoid of urgent questions. This merely bloody piece…
Say this about World Wrestling Federation Entertainment head honcho Vince McMahon: He knows what his fans want. Few movies have ever been as specifically tailored to an existing audience as The Scorpion King, in which McMahon’s prize champion, The Rock, portrays The Rock wearing a loincloth and going by the…
An 18th-century battle of the sexes that contains a radiant performance by Mira Sorvino as a princess whose complicated scheme to win the man she loves finds her juggling three suitors at once, all while disguised as a man. “I’m losing track of my own plot,” she giddily confesses at…
Ah, marriage. How sweet it is to discover, among all the recent wedding movies (Muriel’s, My Best Friend’s, Polish, Monsoon, etc.) that the institution’s still inspiring. Trés Greek writer and star Nia Vardalos has crafted here a worldly wise and very funny script, the better to play opposite decidedly non-Greek…
While it is surely difficult to concoct fresh, lively scenarios from worn elements (neurotic family, neurotic city, neurotic holiday), it is the filmmaker’s obligation, at the very least, to try. To her credit, veteran scribe Daniele Thompson clearly decided to take a very personal tack with her feature directorial debut,…
Arriving in theaters just ahead of a four-disc, outtakes-and-all boxed set and its Rhino Records-issued DVD companion, which comes crammed with two different commentary tracks and assorted effluvia, Martin Scorsese’s rockudrama withstands big-screen scrutiny some 24 years after its initial release. Meant to be seen large and played loud, this…
Women who exchange descriptions of their sexual encounters are certainly no more appealing than men who boast in locker rooms, but they seem to get more free passes. If, in the name of social candor, Jerry Springer can induce sisters to confess what they’ve done with barnyard animals and every…
It is possible to admire Frailty, directed by Texas-born actor Bill Paxton, without actually liking it. It’s not, strictly speaking, a gratifying movie: Too dependent on twists, both excruciatingly obvious and irritatingly ludicrous, it never fully satisfies; what you can’t guess you won’t see coming, because it’s too outrageous to…
Wending through the summaries of this year’s forthcoming blockbusters–dudes fight evil, chicks keep yanking up their trendy hip-huggers while fighting evil–it’s immediately refreshing to note a movie about furry freaks and saucy geeks whose primary goal is just to, you know, do it. In Human Nature, written by Charlie Kaufman…
One would scarcely imagine that the subject of gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews would have the makings of anything more than an exceedingly brief documentary. Leviticus 20:13, which says a man who “lies with a man” must be put to death, doesn’t offer much in the way of wiggle room,…
Directed by a focus group of 17-year-old boys (and their younger sisters, maybe) who titter at the mention of the word “punany” and guffaw at the sight of Selma Blair caught on a cock ring (surrounded, no less, by onlookers straight from a Village People audition), this is romantic comedy…
Ben Affleck is Gavin Banek, a slick attorney who can’t seem to get why people hate lawyers (and him) so much, even as he’s persuading a senile philanthropist to sign over power of appointment to his firm. Samuel L. Jackson is Doyle Gipson, an insurance telemarketer who attends Al-Anon meetings…
