It is no great joy to review Palindromes, the latest film from writer-director Todd Solondz, who is loved by those who do not loathe him for such movies as Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness, and Storytelling. Advance word had Palindromes as Solondz’s most shocking film, which seemed impossible, given its…
If it’s been a while since you’ve seen a great work of art, perhaps you’ve forgotten what it feels like: It feels euphoric. At least, that’s the glorious, heel-kickin’ boost that resulted after a screening of Look at Me, by French writer/director/actress/superhero Agnès Jaoui. There was euphoria — and jubilation…
Whatever you do, don’t accuse Ridley Scott of turning his back on a fight. Doesn’t matter if it’s slimy-fanged space aliens attacking Sigourney Weaver, Roman slaves in tough against hungry lions down at the Coliseum, or American GIs going at it with Somali insurgents. Sir Ridley is always happy to…
The new House of Wax — a remake, pretty much in name only, of the 1953 Vincent Price movie (itself a remake of a 1933 film ) — manages to be gruesome and grisly, but it falls well short of being truly creepy, much less terrifying. Horror aficionados expecting the…
By our count, there are but two sequels waiting to have oil rubbed on their backs this summer — one featuring an evil lord named Vader, the other featuring an evil lord named Schneider — so the season has that going for it, which is nice. But in lieu of…
Author Douglas Adams died at age 49 on May 11, 2001, of a heart attack suffered during a workout at a Santa Barbara, California, gym. His biographer, M.J. Simpson, blamed Adams’ demise in part on his unending battle to get The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on a big screen,…
Don’t let the PG-13 rating fool you. Though it’s acted almost completely by children, Nobody Knows is not a film for children. A poignant, deeply affecting tale of child neglect and abandonment — all the more disturbing for being based on a true incident — this Japanese film (with English…
Agent Fox Mulder, the coolly instinctual sleuth of The X-Files, got pretty good at unraveling paranormal mysteries. If only the actor who played him were as adept at solving the riddle of his movie career. David Duchovny’s new vanity project, House of D, is the tortured tale of a 13-year-old…
Most contemporary thrillers aren’t concerned with moral dilemmas; the emphasis is on action and intrigue. The Israeli film Walk on Water — which, conveniently for American audiences, is primarily in English (the rest is Hebrew and German with English subtitles) — not only raises questions about right and wrong, but…
Among the many mysteries surrounding The Interpreter is the one that finds Sydney Pollack heralded as a major American director, a maker of serious and important movies. His filmography, marked by mawkish mediocrities (Out of Africa, as vibrant as a coffee-table book; The Way We Were, its romance as plausible…
“No more soccer!” declares small-time thug Sing (writer/director/star Stephen Chow) as he vigorously stomps on a child’s ball. In the context of Kung Fu Hustle, it’s a pathetic attempt by Sing to make himself look tough. The larger signal, however, is to followers of Chow’s work — it’s a direct…
Amanda Peet. Ashton Kutcher. Romantic comedy. Who’d have thought it could work? And yet A Lot Like Love is an entertainment success, a triple threat of fresh writing, inspired directing, and, yes, good acting. Fortified with a healthy dose of intelligence, it manages to leap clear across an entire field…
If nothing else, give Dana Brown credit for enthusiasm. A documentary filmmaker in name only, he is really the camera- and microphone-equipped president of several booster clubs — among them what might be called the International Society of Beach Bums and, thanks to his latest exercise in hero worship, the…
When the great playwright Arthur Miller died in February, many admirers took stock again of his most enduring creation, Willy Loman. A delusional idealist who finds himself failed and felled by the American Dream, the tragic hero of Death of a Salesman has for half a century been the most…
Marriage of convenience is not a new subject. In films, in novels, and in countless television shows, we have been invited to witness both the drama and the comedy of the setup: Two people who barely know each other enter into what must appear to be a devoutly serious emotional…
Eight days, 150 films, you know the drill. It’s the tenth year for the Palm Beach International Film Festival, with movies from Boca to Belle Glade and Lake Worth to Jupiter. The festival opens with When Do We Eat? — a Sabbath meal, a tough father, and a son perhaps…
The Groden family lives out in the middle of the New Mexico desert, far from main roads. They grow, harvest, and/or kill all their own food, own their own home, and make what little money they need from crafts. They’ve got no phone or indoor plumbing, and they haven’t paid…
Damian Cunningham has the face of an angel — calm and cool blue eyes perched above freckled cheeks and a benevolent grin — which is appropriate for a 7-year-old boy who speaks with the late, great saints, among them Peter, Joseph, Claire, and, of course, Francis of Assisi. Damian sees…
Last year, the Simmons family of Needham, Massachusetts, just outside Boston, sent Christmas cards for the first time in more than 20 years. “We send out Xmas cards about as often as the Red Sox win the World Series,” the card very cleverly proclaimed. This movie is for them. In…
Sahara is a stunning piece of work — stunningly inept, stunningly incoherent, stunningly awful in every single way imaginable. How this didn’t go direct to video or cable or airplane or bootleg is unfathomable. Actually, that’s not entirely true. It gets a proper blockbuster theatrical release through Paramount Pictures because…
If nothing else, Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City, co-directed with Frank Miller (and Quentin Tarantino, for a few seconds), will be remembered as the most faithful comic-book adaptation ever put on film (or high-def video, anyway). Rodriguez uses Miller’s hypernoir serial, published over a ten-year period, as a storyboard for the…
What if a man has no friends? What if he speaks only when spoken to, and then only of the weather? What if, every day of the week, he attends Mass, serves as a janitor, and retires to a one-room studio, emerging only to return to work? What happens to…
