The exemplary achievements of the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival succeeded by one of two means: narrowing the gap between author and subject in pursuit of intimate effects, or else working distance into the material and profiting from the vantage. Contemporary neorealism at its most confident and alert, Chop Shop…
Saturday Night Fever: 30th Anniversary Special Collector’s Edition (Paramount) For all its camp-classic status as the ultimate disco-fever dream, John Badham’s movie truly is remarkable — a foul-mouthed, mean-streets masterpiece that just happens to feature a Bee Gees score that spreads like melted cheese 30 years later. And, of course,…
Just a guess here, but the majority of Amanda Bynes fans probably didn’t get most of the Shakespeare references in her As You Like It-inspired She’s the Man, so, behold: This time she’s gone for something a bit more familiar with Sydney White. Originally entitled Sydney White and the Seven…
I’ve said it before and hope to again: David Cronenberg is the most provocative, original, and consistently excellent North American director of his generation. From Videodrome (1983) through A History of Violence (2005), neither Scorsese nor Spielberg, and not even David Lynch, has enjoyed a comparable run. A rhapsodic movie…
Beyond the Gates (Fox)Blade: House of Chthon (New Line)The Boss of It All (IFC)Boston Legal: Season Three (Fox)Brothers and Sisters: The Complete First Season (Buena Vista)Catherine Deneuve: Essentials (Wellspring)The Condemned (Lionsgate)Deliverance: Deluxe Edition (Warner Bros.)Family Guy: Volume Five (Fox)Flashdance: Special Collector’s Edition (Paramount)Ghost Whisperer: The Second Season (Paramount)L’Iceberg (First Run)Severance…
It’s pretty much a toss-up which I love more: gorging on cinema or getting up at noon. And so, on the first day of the Toronto International Film Festival, in lieu of contemplating Bela Tarr’s The Man From London, I lingered in my pajamas anticipating The Breakfast From Room Service…
The Graduate: 40th Anniversary Edition(MGM) Fifteen years after its last home-video commemorative edition (extras from which appear here), The Graduate once more gets the bonus-laden makeover — and if ever a movie deserved its kudos, it’s Mike Nichols’ masterwork. That said, the movie is its own bonus; not since its…
In the new Neil Jordan movie, Jodie Foster plays New York talk-radio DJ Erica Bain, who survives a vicious Central Park mugging and becomes an urban crusader devoted to cleaning up the city — with a Glock instead of a broom. Yes, The Brave One is that movie: the one…
Until 2005, Richard Shepard’s was a lamentable direct-to-prop-plane filmography populated with such forgettable titles as Cool Blue, Oxygen, Mexico City, and The Linguini Incident, the latter of which was a heist film most notable for pairing David Bowie and Buck Henry — and that’s not even a punch line. For…
Andre Rieu: Live in New York (Denon) Away From Her (Lionsgate)Bones: Season Two (Fox)Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (HBO)Casper Meets Wendy: Family Fun Edition (Fox)Charmed: The Final Season (Paramount)DOA: Dead or Alive (Weinstein)Ever Again (Starz)Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Heroes — Volume Two (Fox)The Fly Collection (Fox)From Beyond: Unrated Director’s…
Sundance signals, for better or worse, the state of American independent filmmaking. Cannes keeps faith, for those who still believe, with the cinema d’auteur. And Toronto? The largest and most important film festival in North America seems to do nearly as many things as there are movies to see —…
The Office: Season Three (Universal) After a shaky first season and a better-with-every-episode second, The Office proved itself one of the most consistent comedies in the history of the medium. The show has long since escaped the shadow of its BBC forebear and boasts an ensemble from which you could…
Huffing and puffing to resuscitate a long-moribund genre, James Mangold manages to imbue a 50-year-old Western with the semblance of life. Mangold’s remake of 3:10 to Yuma isn’t as startling a resurrection job as his Johnny Cash biopic, but it does send a saddlebag full of Western tropes skittering into…
There have already been critical rumblings about the extreme violence in Shoot ‘Em Up, but it’s hard to get too worked up about a film whose very title announces its maker’s intent and that opens by raking the New Line Cinema corporate logo with machine-gun fire (a gesture long overdue)…
The Black Donnellys: The Complete Series (Universal) Chill Out Scooby-Doo! (Warner Bros.)City of Violence (Weinstein)Delta Farce (Lionsgate)Desperate Housewives: The Complete Third Season (Buena Vista)Disney Princess Enchanted Tales: Follow Your Dreams (Disney)Georgia Rule (Universal)Gumby Essentials (Classic Media)It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Seasons 1 & 2 (Fox)Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol (Classic Media)Nip/Tuck:…
Year of the Dog (Paramount Vantage) It’s just about the First Commandment of Hollywood: Don’t kill the dog. So it’s a testament to the clout of writer/director Mike White (School of Rock) that killing off the dog is the first of many rules broken in this weird-ass movie. Folks fooled…
Steve Buscemi the director is nothing like the art-damaged auteur Buscemi the actor played in 1995’s Living in Oblivion. No dry ice and dwarves for the victim of the cinema’s most celebrated woodchipper massacre, who as a filmmaker inhabits tight spaces and trapped lives like a termite. Give him an…
Back in 1995, Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise gave flesh to a Yank’s fantasy of worldly European womanhood: Julie Delpy’s Celine, a sprite who materialized on a passenger train for one sweet Viennese night of courtship and flirtation, as if willed from the fevered dreams above a thousand hostel beds. As…
Bob Saget: That Ain’t Right (HBO)The Boris Karloff Collection (St. Clair)Broken English (Magnolia)Carlito’s Way: Crime Saga Collection (Universal)Dark Shadows: The Beginning (MPI)The Essential Ozzie & Harriet Collection (Mill Creek)Friday Night Lights: The First Season (Universal)Gideon’s Trumpet (Acorn)Heaven & Hell: Live From Radio City Music Hall (Rhino)Heroes: Season 1 (Universal)John Lennon’s…
The Lives of Others (Sony) Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s film, easily the best of last year, exists on many levels: as tragedy, dark comedy, and love story — not between a man and a woman, but between two seemingly opposite men bound by the same damnation. On the one hand…
Shortly after graduating from film school, I took a part-time job as the assistant to a successful movie and television director who told me I’d be handling a mix of personal and professional responsibilities. Not long after, I was put to work maintaining the good humor of the tenants at…
Resurrecting the Champ is a great movie about journalism — maybe the best there ever was — because Resurrecting the Champ is mind-erasingly boring. It’s a solid story about the newspaper business — specifically, about how a well-intentioned writer occasionally makes a mistake totally by accident, a mistake that is…
