Anyone who wants to start feeling good about war again — and hey, pilgrim, isn’t it about time? — might do well to take in Flyboys. In this elaborate, computer-generated fantasy, the plucky volunteer pilots of the Lafayette Escadrille are once more cast as “knights of the sky,” dashing young…
(First Look) There’s an old saying about Ginger Rogers, who did everything Fred Astaire did — but backwards and in heels. This Australian western seems to be saying something similar about gritty American westerns: You think that’s hard? Try living in the Outback. The Proposition mucks about in dust, blood,…
After Sex (New Yorker) Bob & Tom Radio: The Comedy Tour (Image) The Boris Karloff Collection (Universal) Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (Strand) 8th & Ocean: The Complete First Season (Paramount) Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema (Wolfe) Gilmore Girls: The Complete Sixth Season (Warner Bros.) Go for…
Directed by Brian De Palma from a novel by neo-noirist James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia is a true-crime policer unfolding in late-’40s Los Angeles somewhere between the neighborhoods of Chinatown and Mulholland Drive. The premise involves one of L.A.’s most notorious unsolved homicides. In early 1947, the naked corpse of…
Those 20-somethings, poor dears, can never catch a break in the movies. First this maligned generation is told, in countless gritty indies and perky studio comedies, that it’s rowing through life without oars. Now, director Tony Goldwyn’s admirably understated handling of dispiritingly slender material suggests that if you’re pushing 30,…
“The Rock” — formerly known as “Flex Kavana” and, a bit later, as “Rocky Maivia” — was a practicing actor long before he turned to movies and started taking down $12 million paychecks. The happily deluded throngs who used to watch him lay signature moves like “The People’s Elbow” or…
I Am a Sex Addict (IFC) Caveh Zahedi has made a movie of our times — a strange mix of self-absorption, shamelessness in the pursuit of fame, and sex. Most shocking of all is that it works. Part fiction and documentary, confessional and comedy, the film traces the history of…
Ballets Russes (Zeitgeist) The Batman: The Complete Second Season (Warner Bros.) Beavis and Butt-head Do America: Special Collector’s Edition (Paramount) Bottoms Up (Sony) Disney Princess Stories, Volume 1: A Gift From the Heart (Disney) The Girls (New Yorker) Goal! The Dream Begins (Disney) Grey’s Anatomy: Season 2 Uncut (Buena Vista)…
If Superman Returns attempted to resurrect the Man of Steel as mythic hero, the season’s other Superman movie wants to disabuse us of any such childish illusions. Glamorously adult, Hollywoodland purports to part the veil on the circumstances by which George Reeves, the actor who embodied the superhero on ’50s…
Charles Bukowski’s second novel, Factotum, is a trashy ramble in which the mythically alcoholic writer’s alter ego, Henry Chinaski, drinks, fucks, and gets canned from menial jobs in New Orleans, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and anywhere else one can drink, fuck, feed from the bottom, and growl courtly lyricism…
United 93 (Universal) A suggestion to those who’ve put off watching the year’s most wrenching and essential film: Before rolling the feature, first watch the documentary in which the families of those who died on the plane give the filmmakers their blessing, without reservation. If the mother, father, and sister…
The Abbott and Costello Show: 100th Anniversary Collection, Season One (Passport) Ace Ventura Deluxe Double Feature (Warner Bros.) Amarcord: The Criterion Collection (Criterion) Anne of Avonlea (Koch Vision) Blade Runner: Director’s Cut (Warner Bros.) Broken Trail (Sony) Clive Barker’s The Plague (Sony) Commander in Chief: 2-Disc Inaugural Edition Part 2…
Low, which is to say no, expectations can be a wonderful thing; expect nothing and maybe you’ll get that little outta-nowhere sumpin-sumpin that turns an otherwise unfulfilling occurrence into a vaguely rewarding experience. It’s not like Invincible boasts the most promising of credentials: a first-time filmmaker (Ericson Core, the cinematographer…
Granted, this may seem like a jarringly odd comparison, but like the recent dud Phat Girlz, Heading South deals with the hot-button issue of middle-aged women discovering their sexuality anew thanks to the efforts of muscular black men with exotic accents whose standards of female beauty are more flexible than…
Arrested Development: Season Three (Fox) The final collection of Arrested Development discs feels sadly incomplete: only 13 episodes this time, the result of Fox’s inability to attract viewers to one of TV’s greatest comedies and the network’s unwillingness to give it a full farewell. But none of that diminishes the…
Akeelah and the Bee (Lions Gate) American Gun (IFC) The Castle of Cagliostro (Manga) Desperate Housewives: Season Two (Buena Vista) Stephen King’s Desperation (Lions Gate) Friends With Money (Sony) Iron Island (Kino) Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (Paramount) Lonesome Jim (IFC) Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (Warner Bros.)…
If, at this remove, we can imagine Vienna in the late 1890s, we behold a great imperial capital in ferment. Gustav Mahler is not only reinventing the harmonic structure of serious music but he is getting his head seriously shrunk by Sigmund Freud. Arnold Schoenberg takes painting lessons from eroticist…
One of the weakest and most ridiculous aspects of popular culture is its narcissistic nowness. There’s often no then or later, and without past experience or the messy knowledge of life, modern entertainment media often seem poached in a neurotic teenaged brainpan, entranced with their own ignorant tunnel vision. A…
Farce is an ideal clearing ground for hostility. Like mystery, it’s a genre that typically passes through disruption en route to the restoration of order, albeit with greater likelihood of an airborne pie. It makes sense, then, that every irresolvable conflict will eventually get the version of Meet the Parents…
Veronica Mars: The Complete Second Season (Warner Bros.) Any concept along the lines of “high school hottie solves crimes” is bound to make for watchable TV, but who would have expected this? Equal parts 90210 teen soap, murder mystery, and comedy, Veronica Mars pulls you in with its sharp writing,…
The Apartment (Lions Gate) The Bill Cosby Show: Season One (Shout! Factory) The Blue Light (Pathfinder) Conviction: The Complete Series (Universal) Dances With Wolves: Extended Cut (MGM) Film Geek (First Run) House, M.D.: Season Two (Universal) Invasion: The Complete Series (Warner Bros.) Just My Luck (Fox) The Maid (Tartan) On…
A winning tale of sex, real estate, and more or less immaculate conception, Quinceañera, as you might expect from a white-made drama about Latino life in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles, threatens at first blush to be all about a pregnant teenager and a prodigal cholo in the…
