There is something very important to know about Enduring Love that is not apparent from the title: It’s a thriller. More specifically, it’s a creepy, twisted, overproduced, and often intelligent psychological thriller with an ending all too loyal to the genre. Director Roger Michell (most recently of The Mother, a…
They walk among us. They resemble people, approximate our words and actions, present themselves more or less as human. And yet they are more — a different species, with their own dark legends, their own clandestine meeting places. They are dorks, and they are going to be pretty OK with…
Mike Nichols’ new film Closer is a boiling pot of lust, mistrust, and double-dealing that might well be taken for outright soap opera — or, in quite a few places, soft-core porn — were it not for the sophisticated gleam of its well-heeled London desperadoes and the vicious dazzle of…
Before he made Primer for some $7,000, Dallas software engineer turned writer/director/actor/editor Shane Carruth had no idea how to make a movie. Some who see his creation will argue he still doesn’t, while others will lavish upon it hearty praise reserved for visionaries who leap from the shadows to the…
At the bottom of the ocean, inside a giant pineapple, lives a yellow, oblong sponge who likes to blow bubbles, eat more ice cream than is good for him, and work as a fry cook. The “Krabby Patty” sandwiches he makes are so popular that a one-eyed plankton, who runs…
Oh, that Johnny Depp. Played in some dime-a-dozen rock bands, did some average television, made a few cutesy little movies. Whatever. Yeah, he messes with his looks in a fun way sometimes, but otherwise he merely rides that nicotine-sunken-cheeks thing all the way to the bank. The guy’s popular, but…
Margo Channing cracked wiser. And her devious protégée cooked up better schemes to steal the limelight. Still, half a century after they lit up the screen, the principals in All About Eve would likely get a charge out of Being Julia. This bittersweet backstage drama skillfully combines — as all…
There is something very important to know about Enduring Love that is not apparent from the title: It’s a thriller. More specifically, it’s a creepy, twisted, overproduced, and often intelligent psychological thriller with an ending all too loyal to the genre. Director Roger Michell (most recently of The Mother, a…
Jerry Bruckheimer has always insisted he cares less about critical acclaim than commercial appeal. “We make movies for the common man,” he said almost three years ago, as Black Hawk Down was crash-landing in theaters. “The pictures that I’ve made over the last 20 years or so have been very…
The most shocking thing about Kinsey, the first film from writer-director Bill Condon since 1998’s Gods and Monsters, is how shocking it actually is. Within the confines of a standard biopic (A Beautiful Dirty Mind, you might call it), Condon refuses to play it straight — which is only appropriate,…
If you’ve ever gone line dancing with a gaggle of amputees on crank and hallucinogens, you know something of the feeling engendered by viewing Alexander. This broad, bold, and ambitious film by Oliver Stone presents itself as a fairly straightforward endeavor, but its rhythms quickly go strange while its participants…
Editor’s note: The Florida International Film Festival finally comes to an end Sunday at Cinema Paradiso, with a screening of Pedro Almodóvar’s latest lively exercise in dramatic flippancy. Bad Education, the new film by flamboyant Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, opens with a man sitting at a table, poring over the…
When shot with verve and skill, so that we can feel the heat and passion of the moment, a concert film is the next best thing to being there. That’s the way it is with Lightning in a Bottle, a Martin Scorsese-produced documentary that captures an extraordinary evening in February…
A week after having seen Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, no memory of it remains save some scribblings in my notepad, such is the slight nature of this woeful, forgettable sequel. Squandering the goodwill that lingers from the original, now a beloved relic among the singletons and smug marrieds…
Editor’s note: The Florida International Film Festival continues this week with couples in counseling, the dark side of North Korea, and the ever-popular wacky housewife. Unscrewed It’s easy to think of this film (formerly Dogs in the Basement) as a documentary, when it’s actually a faux-documentary in the vein of…
Editor’s note: The three-county, monthlong Florida International Film Festival continues this week with an array of foreign films and an American potboiler. Beat the Drum Earnest and obvious in the manner of a made-for-TV movie, this first feature from South African director David Hickson at least means well. It’s about…
Editor’s note: The sprawling Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival continues through November 21. Here are reviews of some of the films that will be shown this week. Liberi Where have all the great Italian directors gone? And what’s happening with Italian cinema post-Fellini when the most notable film produced in…
A parody of Gerry Anderson marionette shows (like Thunderbirds and Joe 90), Jerry Bruckheimer action movies, and the `80s cartoon/toy line M.A.S.K. , Team America: World Police boils all those ingredients down to their essences, starting with the theme song “Americaaa… Fuck yeah!” (imagine it scored like Kenny Loggins’ “Danger…
The Grudge bears the imprimatur of Sam Raimi, but alas, neither his sense of fun nor his smarts. The wunderkind director behind the Spider-Man and Evil Dead franchises has followed in the path of Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver with their Dark Castle releases, launching his own lucrative spook factory,…
For 19 years now, the “Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival” has been giving South Florida movie enthusiasts such a cornucopia of choices, it’s downright daunting. With upward of 150 films spread over five weeks and three counties, there’s more sprawl to the event than a west Broward suburb. You can…
There are at least three movies contained within the covers of H.G. Bissinger’s best-selling 1990 nonfiction book, Friday Night Lights. One is concerned with the socioeconomic life of a small West Texas town built on the wobbly foundations of oil and racism and the out-of-whack worship of a high school…
Tweener fave Hilary Duff effortlessly maintains her wholesome image in Raise Your Voice, a coming-of-age drama (what else would you expect when the star is all of 16?) that is being marketed as a kind of updated Fame. Whereas director Alan Parker’s popular 1980 musical was set at Manhattan’s prestigious…
