(MGM) John Milius’ 1984 war pic was a mighty bonkers release even back then. Not since the 1950s had something come down the pike so rife with Commie paranoia. Russian and Cuban forces invade the U.S. with tanks and choppers and the whole shebang only to be met with Brat…
The magic has returned to the Harry Potter franchise — albeit magic of the old, black variety. The darkest and most threatening by far of the five Potter films, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is also the only series entry outside of the third, Alfonso Cuarón´s Harry…
(Palm) A hit at the South by Southwest Film Festival two years ago, Keven McAlester’s doc about the Papa of Psychedelia, Roky Erickson, at long last gets its proper release. But time has done McAlester a tremendous favor: Had he shot the film too soon, he would have been forced…
After the Wedding (IFC) The Astronaut Farmer (Warner Bros.) Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad (Funimation) Brutal (Lionsgate) The Comedy Collection (Lionsgate) Elizabeth Taylor Collection (St. Clair) Extras: The Complete Second Season (HBO) Fat Burning Hip Hop Dance Party: Urban Style (Shami) Fred Astaire Collection (St. Clair) Frankie & Annette: MGM Movie…
Transformers twiddles its big, fat, stupid robotic thumbs for the better part of two hours before jabbing them into your eye socket and finger-fucking your brain in the last 20 minutes. Yes! It´s torture enough waiting for the iPhone and the second coming of Jesus without wondering when, exactly, this…
Anyone can cook, but only the fearless can be great.¨ So goes the personal mantra of the late celebrity chef Auguste Gusteau, whose disembodied spirit materializes — Jiminy Cricket-style — to guide the rodent hero of Brad Bird´s Ratatouille toward his goal of gastronomic excellence. He also seems to be…
We´re Americans. We go into other countries when we need to. It´s tricky, but it works.¨ So declares Michael Moore in the midst of his new documentary, Sicko. Moore may be riffing on the war in Iraq, to name only our most recent intervention, but he´s actually referring to U.S…
Still an all-American bloodhound after all these years, Bruce Willis´ Det. John McClane begins Live Free or Die Hard sniffing around a Rutgers-Camden parking lot and busting the frat boy who´s been trying to cop a feel off his daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Oh, Dad! Since much of the…
It takes Bruce Willis awhile to get warmed up. He’s always just a bit below room temperature — a cool brother, dig, dating back to his Moonlighting days as a private dick belting out “Tighten Up” while going undercover as a man of the cloth in Wayfarer shades. He’s been…
Black Snake Moan (Paramount) The best place to see Craig Brewer’s mash-up of blood-boiling exploitation elements would be a Mississippi drive-in circa 1972. His tale of a black bluesman (Samuel L. Jackson) who chains up a seething, scantily clad cracker nympho (Christina Ricci) would’ve had the lot under martial law…
The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3: The Complete Series (Shout!) Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (Anchor Bay) Dead Silence (Universal) Echo & the Bunnymen: Dancing Horses (MVD) Film School (Docurama) Frankenstein Conquers the World (Tokyo Shock) Going Under: Unrated Version (Blue Underground) High School Musical: The…
Evan Almighty, the follow-up to Bruce Almighty, is the work of an angry God. At 89 minutes that last a lifetime, it´s a sanctimonious sitcom dolled up as the most expensive comedy ever made — $175 mil, so they say, no doubt choking — and marks an unfortunate low point…
Mike Enslin, the travel writer played by John Cusack in 1408, could use a better travel agent. Every hotel room in which he finds himself booked is said to be occupied by the ghost of some suicidal creep or a murderous goon who left behind a pile of bodies in…
Eli Roth is obviously a poseur, but on the evidence of Hostel: Part II, he´s also kind of a pussy. Anyone can string a naked woman up by the ankles and slit her throat, and while I admit it takes a little extra something to position a Eurotrash villainess beneath…
Once, written and directed by John Carney, is a deceptively simple movie — a narrative strung together by pop songs but without the sheen (or arrogance) of most cinematic musicals. By day, a Dublin busker (Glen Hansard) sings Van Morrison on a street corner for spare change, which, on occasion,…
Glastonbury (THINKFilm) Only a Julien Temple concert doc would get the R rating — for nudity (male, mostly, and not terribly flattering at that), drug use (weed, mostly — yawn), language, and sexual content. Also dig the overwrought BBC narration, in which Glastonbury is described as a former refuge for…
Blood & Chocolate (Sony) Breach (Universal) The Cecil B. DeMille Classics Collection (Passport) Deadwood: The Complete Third Season (HBO) 52 Pick-Up (MGM) Ghost Rider (Sony) The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries: Season Two (Universal) Hellboy: Blood & Iron (Anchor Bay) James Stewart: Screen Legend Collection (Universal) Jesse Stone: Night Passage…
Ocean´s Thirteen Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Written by Brian Koppelman and David Levien. Starring Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, Al Pacino, Elliott Gould, and Ellen Barkin. 113 minutes. Rated PG-13.
(MGM) Sergio Leone made westerns like Wagner made ditties. This essential boxed set — four films with four discs of supplemental material, much of it scholarly and insightful — shows the Italian director supplanting the elegiac Monument Valley iconography of John Ford with a darker, ruder, more bleak-humored brand of…
The Abyss: Special Edition (Fox) The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: Extra Frills Edition (MGM) Bruce Springsteen With the Sessions Band: Live in Dublin (Sony) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: A Re-Imagining of the 1919 Masterpiece of Horror (Image) CHiPs: The Complete First Season (Turner) Coming to America:…
There is a moment early on in “Dead Dogs and Gym Teachers,” the 14th episode of the brilliant but canceled television series Freaks and Geeks, in which gangly, bespectacled, picked-last-in-gym-class high school freshman Bill Haverchuck (Martin Starr) arrives home from school, makes himself a grilled cheese sandwich, and sits down…
“I think the public doesn’t care about reviews,” says Eli Roth, writer-director of Hostel Part II, which — surprise! — isn’t being shown to the press before it opens Friday on more than 2,500 screens. Still, the 35-year-old perpetrator of high-grossing “torture porn” does appreciate critical kindness when he sees…
