Hollywood appears to be developing a healthy sense of humor about Valentine’s Day, which, from this cynic’s perspective, is a good thing. In the new millennium, rather than dole out romantic trifles like Return to Me as per the usual plan, we’ve seen Valentine (bitter ex-nerd cuts beautiful people to…
As pure bang-up adventure, The Mexican is certainly more user-friendly than childish junk like The Way of the Gun, but the attempt to weave adult relationship psychobabble and cultural significance into the action rings utterly false, resulting in whiny gringos in taco-land. Along the road to the explosive conclusion, there…
Im Kwon Taek has long been the best-known Korean director in America; in fact, it would be fair to say that he’s pretty much the only even vaguely known Korean director, and even then his renown is strictly among festivalgoers. The general distribution of his latest film, Chunhyang, should be…
With In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar-wai solidifies his stature as the most subtle and most idiosyncratic of Hong Kong directors. In an industry best known for its accessible, crowd-pleasing comedies and action films, Wong has turned out a series of increasingly risky dramas that make little or no…
Commencing with titles none too subtly placed over the bosom of a troubled young mother (Russian actress Dina Korzun) and wending its swift way through the generous advances of a lovable lout (Paddy Considine, the one-man goon squad of A Room For Romeo Brass), Last Resort is a film obsessed…
It’s almost impossible to know what to make of Monkeybone after one viewing; there’s so much going on in this dreamland of stop-motion and computer-generated animation and celebrity cameos that you almost have trouble keeping up with it. Indeed, like a half-remembered dream, the movie’s often so overwhelming that even…
Lance Barton, thin as paper and frail as fine china, is such a horrific stand-up that during an amateur-night performance at the Apollo Theater, he is booed with such force–the audience whips up its own whirlwind–he’s literally knocked off the stage. Lance’s manager insists he’s such a failure because he’s…
Sara is quirky and free-spirited. That, at least, is the premise of the hilariously wretched new weepie Sweet November, of which Sara, embodied by the breathtaking Charlize Theron, is the heroine. But if you’re smart enough to run in terror at the threat of a movie character who’s quirky and…
Ridley Scott’s Hannibal, with a screenplay by David Mamet and Steven Zaillian, is being released exactly 10 years after Silence of the Lambs, the film that established Hannibal Lecter as an iconic villain in our culture, right up there with Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger, Friday the 13th’s Jason,…
The man who made Problem Child, Beverly Hills Ninja, and Brain Donors–which are to humor what Robert Downey Jr. is to clean living–has, perhaps all too explicably, become Hollywood’s most coveted and celebrated comedic director. “From the director of Big Daddy”–so blares the trailer for Saving Silverman, touting Dennis Dugan…
That anyone should consider making a film of Reinaldo Arenas’ memoir Before Night Falls is curious. That the person to do it should be painter-turned-film director Julian Schnabel is truly unusual. And that the results should be as good as they are is most remarkable of all. But it would…
With the canon of Jane Austen all but exhausted, literary filmmakers continue their assault on Edith Wharton, another sharply observant writer of yore with something timeless to say about the plight of women. Terence Davies’ The House of Mirth, from Wharton’s beautifully detailed, ironically titled 1905 novel about a mannerly…
There is an eerie sense of familiarity wafting through The Invisible Circus, a pervasive whiff of déjà vu that intensifies with each passing minute. Regardless of whether or not one has read the novel of the same name by Jennifer Egan, it’s impossible to deny that there’s ample foreknowledge of…
Vampires have always seemed to be the coolest of the doomed, creatures both fascinating and evil. Amid all the seduction, sexual metaphor, and consumption, however, the source of the creature’s unholy hunger usually remains a mystery. Not so in Shadow of the Vampire by E. Elias Merhige (Begotten), a film…
The Wedding Planner begins with footage of a 7-year-old girl performing a wedding ceremony with her Barbies, a fitting opening since the movie that ensues could almost be the result of a screenwriter literally transcribing the play scenario enacted by a small child and her dolls. If you were (or…
There are few things more deadly in cinema than theater types taking stage material and simply transposing it to the big screen. But occasionally such adaptations are handled so deftly that they work. To stretch a point, one could mention My Dinner with Andre as a successful instance; and, I’m…
Quite obviously, Guy Ritchie was paying very close attention to the early-’90s Tarantino double-whammy of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Fascinated by the commercial success of films that blend ruthless violence with brash cutting and cartoonish characters, Ritchie emerged with a hit called Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. For…
For his first film as director, 1991’s The Indian Runner, Sean Penn chose as his source material Bruce Springsteen’s “Highway Patrolman,” off Nebraska. It was a perfect song, and it spawned a nearly perfect movie; Penn, writing his own screenplay about two brothers–one good, one bad, each inseparable from the…
“This is some damn fine coffee you got here in Twin Peaks. And some damn good cherry pie. But I have to tell you something, sheriff: Last night, I had a dream in which a dancing midget talked backward, thus leading me to believe that our killer is a man…
The 20th century is replete with examples of unconscionable crimes carried out in the name of some quasi-political, military, or religious cause–acts of such misguided judgment and mindless brutality. The My Lai massacre of 1968, in which American GIs gunned down more than 500 Vietnamese civilians, most of them women…
Writer-director Anne DeSalvo explores the notion that compromise is a good thing with rare grace and an abundance of rich characterization in her debut feature, The Amati Girls. Centered on a gaggle of four adult sisters, the movie presents a lively discourse upon love and life that would kill you…
Playwright-filmmaker David Mamet has the sharpest gift imaginable for shooting down the sins of American greed, the con games people run to get ahead, and the corruption that comes with success. Whether he’s haunting a secondhand junk shop, a poker room, or an outlying real-estate office, he always finds enough…
