The dumbed-down movie version of Frances Mayes’ best-selling travel memoir Under the Tuscan Sun is a virtual case study of Hollywood’s irrepressible urge to lower the bar in the hopes of upping the take. Mayes’ 1996 book is a nicely written, carefully observed meditation on buying a decrepit Italian villa…
Somewhere in the deepest mists of Eastern Europe lies an urban hell shrouded in shadowy azure where darkly enchanted black-leather-clad denizens leap about to thudding techno, blurting outrageously melodramatic proclamations in randomly accented English. It’s The Crow meets The Matrix, it’s gothcore tricked out with wire-stunts, and most important, it’s…
When it made the rounds of the gay and lesbian film festivals last year, Km. (Kilometer Zero) found itself the winner of several audience awards — prizes voted on by festivalgoers themselves for the film they happened to enjoy the most. The ensemble-cast Spanish comedy couldn’t arrive at a…
Visualize Tokyo. Got it? Now add popular favorite Bill Murray, doing his “lovable shmoe” shtick. Toss in American Rhapsody’s up-and-comer Scarlett Johansson, doing her standard “like, duh” face. Dip them both into emotional torpor in the sleek Park Hyatt, add local color, stir. Et voilà: Lost in Translation. For Sofia…
When Nicolas Cage plays still and sullen — a man possessed by self-loathing and melancholy in Adaptation, say, or the landlocked angel in City of Angels — he comes off as drowsy. He disappears into those roles like a head plopped in a fluffy pillow, and it doesn’t quite suit…
God bless Johnny Depp. For the second time this year, the man has almost single-handedly redeemed an action movie that would otherwise be indistinguishable from the pack. Introduced right up front in Robert Rodriguez’s Once Upon a Time in Mexico, he’s first seen dressed up like Prince in purple glasses…
Most will deny it, but inside every grown man lurks a hypersensitive adolescent girl. Allow me to tell you all about mine and to share some of my poetry… Whoa! Relax. Put away that gun. Just seeking to emphasize that in the case of director Catherine Hardwicke’s debut feature, Thirteen,…
Charlotte Sometimes introduces us to Michael (Michael Idemoto), a taciturn mechanic who also happens to be a landlord. Lori (Eugenia Yuan) is his tenant and one of his best friends, allegedly, but she’s also a fabulously beautiful woman who acts irritatingly flirty with him all the time, then has really…
Simon must propose to me now,” exclaims pretty, simple-minded Rose (Rose Byrne), “before he meets somebody else or gets to know me better!” Welcome to the none-too-subtly-named Mortmain family, wherein foundering patriarch James (Bill Nighy) — for all symbolic definitions a dead writer — has been allowing his prolonged delusions…
The last thing the Roman Catholic Church needs at this point is another exposé of its misdeeds. The shock of the pedophilia scandals and of the official cover-ups isn’t going away anytime soon, and when last we looked, the former bishop of the Phoenix diocese was out on $45,000 bail…
Ah, Paris — City of Light, of Love, of Liver Damage and Lung Cancer. C’est formidable, non? Who in need of a posh vacation would turn down the opportunity to luxuriate in its finest hotels, to stuff oneself with sumptuous snails, and to work on a terribly flat romantic drama…
It’s a great pleasure to behold a chunk of art that’s both dank and fresh at the same time, and this appraisal perfectly fits the superb Dirty Pretty Things. The latest from veteran director Stephen Frears (Gumshoe, Prick Up Your Ears, High Fidelity) immediately transports the viewer to a subjective…
When was the last time you said to yourself: “Y’know, what I seek for my viewing pleasure is a boring, obscenely diluted remake of Fight Club set in the fascinating world of dentistry”? Indeed, it is a grave displeasure to announce that stellar director Alan Rudolph (The Moderns) has delivered…
Deck. Wheels. Attitude. This is the stuff of Grind, a new comedy about skateboarding and its effects on the human psyche. Neither young dawgs nor old poops will be surprised that the movie is about friendship, competition, product placement, and, like, chasing one’s, like, dreams. Yet Grind craftily sidesteps the…
Military clerk Ray Elwood (Joaquin Phoenix) is something of a modern-day Sgt. Bilko. Anything you need, he can get. Any scam that’s possible, he’ll run. Never mind the bumbling Col. Berman (Ed Harris) who ostensibly runs the unit — Elwood has him wrapped around his finger. There’s just one major…
For a few minutes, at least, things don’t look so bad. Watching Ben Affleck swagger around as the thuggish title character of Gigli (“Rhymes with really,” he tells us, twice) is amusing for a bit. Affleck is eminently qualified for the role, actually — that of a low-level hood pretending…
Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald asserted that “there are no second acts in American lives.” But a horse named Seabiscuit and the three disparate men who shared his success would surely disagree. Based on the best-selling nonfiction book by Laura Hillenbrand, Seabiscuit recounts the true story of an unprepossessing, knobby-kneed horse…
From the lofty American vantage point, Mexico’s new wave filmmakers have materialized like magic, the unexpected fruit of a renaissance that even many cinematically alert Yanquis hardly took the trouble to notice. Meanwhile, these new directors have fashioned a vivid style that combines, in various proportions, Latin American literary experimentation,…
So much for those crackpot theories about flighty teenagers and their short attention spans. For four long years now, bland pop star Mandy Moore has stuck in the brain pan of white adolescent America like a wad of bubblegum, and there’s no sign that she will loosen her grip anytime…
If, in keeping with current fads, you seek movies featuring females kicking a bunch of ass, your appetite will be tended (and cultivated) at the multiplex all summer long. Wander into your local art house, however, and you may find a fine if somewhat challenging import called The Legend of…
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen — or LXG, as Fox refers to it, as though it’s the latest Lexus all-terrain vehicle — would have you think it’s the summer action movie with a brain; certainly, its literary allusions would have you believe it has visited more libraries than video-rental outlets…
To prepare for reviewing Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, I did the obvious research: I watched Yellowbeard again. Yes, yes indeed — can’t do without Fairbanks as The Black Pirate and Flynn as Captain Blood. But when appraising a new comedic pirate adventure, it’s important…
