If the summer movie season is our annual time for escapism, last summer’s audiences escaped most often with the likes of Hulk, Terminator 3, and The Matrix Reloaded. Those titles, respectively, ended in a homeless and penniless hero, the end of life on Earth as we know it, and our…
Ever-evolving, always changing, the universe nonetheless sustains many constants: Hair metal never really goes away; British women inevitably become besotted grumps; and short men always turn into intolerable control freaks. Another “true generality” holds that males of all statures develop their innate behavioral characteristics within patriarchal cultures that, while aiming…
Suicide made merry. Brotherly devotion tinged with carnal deceit. Personal tragedy transformed by malicious humor. These are some of the oil-and-water notions advanced by Lone Scherfig’s Wilbur, a mood-switching meditation on love and death that goes out of its way to yank our chains. From the sly come-on of her…
We must keep the atmosphere electrified!” creepy Igor announces in reference to an abominable experiment in Van Helsing, but he could be appraising the entirety of this enormous event movie. Breathless cutting, nonstop special effects, and a pummeling soundtrack camouflage very silly plotting and mediocre-to-sappy dialogue — and yet, the…
Laws of Attraction is the kind of film you might mistake for “cute” or “charming” at first glance. Maybe you will open the paper and spot the ad with Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore canoodling and think to yourself how nice it would be to see James Bond defrosting indie…
One thing few may mention about Mean Girls is that it could have been unrelentingly terrible. It isn’t — it’s actually pretty fabulous on its own terms — but consider: a rush-job comedy, constructed around a high-concept title with built-in ka-ching and endless potential as talk-show fodder. Produced by Lorne…
Every once in a while, you encounter a person who seems to have been born under an urgent, righteous star — a person who is both a fiery activist lit with the passion of his convictions and a dramatic storyteller who naturally occupies a place in the public eye. When…
As a proud sponsor of the Colin Farrell media blitz, Intermission opens on the lad’s salable mug, basically sporting the same buzz-cut ‘n’ tats look from his punky cameo in Veronica Guerin. It’s a cunning editorial move, pushing the product from the get-go, yet it gets interesting as Farrell’s dumb…
The six-month intermission is over; those of you left in the lobby, wondering if Uma Thurman ever did kill Bill, may now return to your seats and unbuckle your belts and resume your gorging. Rest assured that Kill Bill Vol. 2, the final half of Quentin Tarantino’s fifth movie, offers…
Through Thursday, April 22, at Muvico Parisian 20, CityPlace, West Palm Beach; and at Sunrise Cinemas Mizner Park, Boca Raton. Call 561-362-0003.
It’s a measure of continual cultural desensitization that The Girl Next Door plays like a remake of 1983’s Risky Business, yet very little of it feels risky in the slightest. Twenty years on, the notion of a high school student getting involved in the sex-for-pay business seems almost cute rather…
The Golden Age of the Comic Book Movie has turned the color of tarnished copper. But there is no going back, not when comic shops have become movie studios’ research and development labs. No moving forward either; the comic-book movie has become a cinematic smudge once more, one blurring into…
Before Star Wars and Indiana Jones, audiences thrilled to an epic big-screen trilogy of a different sort: the tale of one righteous lawman and his big piece of wood. Based on the real-life exploits of Tennessee sheriff Buford Pusser, the first Walking Tall movie (1973) made lead actor Joe Don…
If you were a college-aged East Berliner in October of 1989, chances are that your time was occupied by one of several things. Protesting comes to mind, as does hacking at long-reviled concrete. Perhaps you caroused or lit fireworks or sang with joy as you coursed through the newly open…
The Ladykillers is the second film in as many years made by Joel and Ethan Coen to fill space between pet projects that seem to run off leash; it’s their time-killer, if you will. But even their recent paychecks reflect the brothers’ restlessness: Their movies have grown more manic and…
Jersey Girl, the sixth film by writer-director Kevin Smith, is the least Kevin Smith-y film he’s ever made, which will be welcome news to those exhausted by Smith’s everlasting obsession with his dick, fart jokes, and stack of comic books; and bad news to those enamored of Smith’s everlasting obsession…
It’s a bit unorthodox to ladle superlatives all over a film in the opening paragraph, but The Reckoning deserves them. Moving, gripping, and powerful, suspenseful, stylish, and literate, this exploration of justice and art may be set in 1390s England, but its resonance is fully relatable and significant today. This…
Michael Caine is a revelation!” declares the Jeffrey Lyons quote appearing on ads for The Statement. Lyons is right, but not in the way you might expect. Indeed, Caine’s performance here is revelatory — who knew he could be this boring? Insufferable, yes — Oscar aside, his mangled “American” accent…
Maybe the most amazing thing about the big-screen version of Starsky & Hutch is how much smaller it feels than its predecessor, the William Blinn-created, Aaron Spelling-produced cop series that ran on ABC from 1975 to ’79. Everything about this cineplex variation feels rinky-dink, like some extended variety-show skit that…
Remember Omar Sharif? He’s been all but absent from the silver screen in recent years (though he has been seen — or at least heard — on television). According to the actor, he left the trade by choice: “Let us stop this nonsense, these meal tickets that we do because…
Some acts of courage command everyone’s respect: the firefighter’s return to a burning house to rescue a child, the infantryman’s sacrifice of self for a wounded comrade, the weary black woman’s refusal to yield her seat on a segregated bus. Sometimes, though, courage can feel clouded — especially when it’s…
At first glance, Hidalgo seems to be nothing more than an old-fashioned, flat-footed adventure epic plunked down on a vast stretch of desert and amply furnished with the usual Hollywood conventions — a strong, silent cowboy on horseback, a couple of villains with nasty black mustaches, a killer sandstorm, and…
