War is hell, says Home of the Brave, and if you’re Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, so is acting. Fiddy gets a leg up from typecasting as Jamal Atkins, one of four demoralized veterans of Operation Enduring Fuckup, home from Iraq to a world of pain. How to handle back problems,…
History repeats itself: 11 Decembers ago, Universal had the season’s strongest movie — a downbeat sci-fi flick freely adapted from a well-known source by a name director. With a bare minimum of advance screenings and a shocking absence of hype, the studio dumped it. This year, it’s done it again…
Robert Wilonsky and Jordan Harper recap their top DVDs of 2006: Eraserhead (Absurda/Subversive) — Finally available on DVD, David Lynch’s debut film is as captivating and frustrating as it ever was. The print looks great in its own weird way, and the feature-length doc shows Lynch speaking more clearly about…
The Good German, directed by Steven Soderbergh from Joseph Kanon’s bestseller, is as much simulation as movie. Specifically, it’s the simulation of a 1940s private eye flick. It’s not just a period film but one that feigns being shot as it would have been in that period. Filmed for maximum…
It took Norman Mailer seven years and 1,282 pages to write 1991’s Harlot’s Ghost: A Novel of the CIA, and if memory serves, it took me 12 years to actually finish it. So director Robert De Niro and screenwriter Eric Roth can be forgiven for taking two hours and 40…
Jackass Number Two: Unrated (Paramount) This sequel to the dumb-ass jamboree makes its predecessor look plain and inoffensive. In short: more puke, more blood, more semen (from a horse, consumed nonetheless), more shit, more piss, more everything till you’d think the Jackasses (Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, etc.) would be…
Our top DVD picks for the week of December 19: Agnes & His Brothers (First Run) All the King’s Men (Sony) American Pie: The Naked Mile (Universal) The Beauty Academy of Kabul (Docurama) The Celestine Prophecy (Sony) Checking Out (Allumination) Derailed (Weinstein) Dreamland (Sony) Invincible (Disney) Lady in the Water…
Airwolf: Season Two (Universal) Be With Me (Film Movement) Dane Cook’s Tourgasm (HBO) Danica (First Look) Factotum (IFC) The Family Values Tour 2006 (Firm Music) Girls Behaving Badly, Volume One (Starlight) Haven (Fox) Mars Invades the Earth! (Alpha) Mi Amigo (Velocity) Mr. Fix It (First Look) The New Adventures of…
It is said that a great actor or actress can “bring down the house,” but before I saw (and heard) the 25-year-old American Idol finalist Jennifer Hudson in the film version of the 1981 Broadway musical Dreamgirls, I can’t recall the last time I truly feared for the architectural stability…
Bankrupt and brain damaged in Rocky V, a bout fought so long ago that the other Bush was still sucker-punching Saddam, Sylvester Stallone’s titular pugilist returns to suffer another beating in Rocky Balboa. How much punishment can an audience take? Even 007 gets his license renewed by younger models every…
The Good German, directed by Steven Soderbergh from Joseph Kanon’s bestseller, is as much simulation as movie. Specifically, it’s the simulation of a 1940s private eye flick. It’s not just a period film, but one that feigns being shot as it would have been in that period. Filmed for maximum…
When the Levees Broke (HBO) Spike Lee’s four-part doc, easily the best non-fiction film of 2006, gets a fifth part on DVD: a 105-minute epilogue that reveals just how little has changed since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in August 2005. Featuring new interviews with the displaced and displeased,…
About Will Smith’s estimable talents, there is no doubt. Six Degrees of Separation, Ali… um… the “Parents Just Don’t Understand” video — the man’s got skills to pay the bills, yours and mine and his. That he seldom uses them, or their attendant clout, is dispiriting. This is an actor…
“TIA,” mutters Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio), slouched across a bar in Sierra Leone. It is 1999. As the West obsesses over Clinton’s blowjob, the West African nation is mired in a savage civil war. Our hero, a world-weary soldier of fortune, has struck up conversation with Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly),…
Talladega Nights (Columbia) This cut of Will Ferrell’s NASCAR comedy runs 13 minutes longer than the theatrical version, and that doesn’t take into account the deleted and extended scenes, outtakes, phony commercials, public-service announcements, and gag reel. A movie that already seemed to be constructed from deleted scenes is well…
AFI: I Heard a Voice (Interscope) Air Buddies (Disney) Ali Rap (ESPN) The Andy Griffith Show: The Complete Series (Paramount) Barnyard (Paramount) The Chronicles of Narnia: Four-Disc Extended Edition (Disney) A Dead Calling (Lions Gate) The Doors (Lions Gate) James Bond: Ultimate Edition Volumes 3 and 4 (MGM) John Wayne…
The Architect (Magnolia) Beerfest: Unrated (Warner Bros.) Charlie Chan Collection, Volume 2 (Fox) Coma Girl (Cinequest) The Conformist: Special Collector’s Edition (Paramount) Dinosaur Valley Girls: Mammoth Edition (Cinema Epoch) Dungeons & Dragons: The Complete Animated Series (Brentwood) Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton: The Film Collection (Warner Bros.) Gwen Stefani: Harajuku…
Apocalypto has a faux Greek title and an opening quote from historian Will Durant that ruminates on the decline of imperial Rome. It may seem an odd way to comment on the supposed end of an imaginary, unspeakably barbaric Mayan civilization — but WWJD? Mel Gibson means to be universal…
Written and directed by Nancy Meyers. Starring .
“TIA,” mutters Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio), slouched across a bar in Sierra Leone. It is 1999. As the West obsesses over Clinton’s blowjob, the West African nation is mired in a savage civil war. Our hero, a world-weary soldier of fortune, has struck up conversation with Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly),…
Rocky: 2-Disc Collector’s Edition (MGM) An old TV commercial for Rocky included here compares Sylvester Stallone to Pacino, De Niro, and Brando — and though we now know this to be pure madness, it’s easy to see what inspired it. Sure, Stallone (who also wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay) slowly destroyed…
No, the Virgin Mary doesn’t get high on aerosol fumes, and Joseph doesn’t ride in on a skateboard, but in most other respects, The Nativity Story is less of a departure for Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown director Catherine Hardwicke than one would have imagined. From our first glimpse of…
