Can we please, for the love of God, declare a moratorium on the use of Wild Cherry’s “Play that Funky Music” on the soundtrack of any and all movies? At the very least, if the plot of the movie in question features an uncool white guy who undergoes a quest…
Imagine a large, dead Saint Bernard with its bones removed. Then visualize a hefty bellows inserted into it from behind, with a gorilla hopping up and down on it, causing the huge dog’s bag-like corpse to twitch spasmodically, wheeze and croak. Voila, this is today’s Nick Nolte. What’s amazing is…
Among Anger Management’s copious flaws is the fact that its premise doesn’t wash. Adam Sandler’s Dave Buznik, a designer of catalogs for overweight-cats clothing, isn’t really angry at all; he’s just a self-loathing, introverted mess whose insecurities date back to a crowded street party in Brooklyn circa 1978, when he…
Vin Diesel tried to be James Bond in XXX, now he’s trying to be Dirty Harry in A Man Apart. One might assume that he chose this role in order to stretch his acting muscles, or his tear ducts — there’s a whole lot of boo-hooing about the slain spouse…
While admitting to being neither a giddy young girl nor a particularly stupid adult, this critic shall review What a Girl Wants as objectively as possible. Accidental love-child Daphne Rey-nolds (Amanda Bynes) has spent her 17 years thus far as a native New Yorker holed up in Chinatown with her…
It’s hard to believe they were originally going to release Basic before bombs started falling over Baghdad; if it isn’t the worst movie of 2003 so far, it’s only because Boat Trip hasn’t screened yet. Now, in the shadow of smoke rising from the rubble in Iraq, it’s even more…
The prospect of a new Chris Rock movie, especially for those who enjoy his standup, can be a scary thing. We want to like him. A movie anywhere near as funny as his HBO series and specials would be a wondrous thing to see. But every time we get our…
In the hit Armageddon, our planet — big mother, source of life and self — is threatened by Ben Affleck and other calamitous horrors, with the movie commanding attention through fear. The converse now arrives in The Core, wherein the mama herself goes terminally nasty on the inside due to…
In nature, living things prey upon each other all the time. Humanity, on the other hand, has a choice. It is flouting this choice that excites director Gaspar Noé. In his latest project, Irréversible, he basically swipes Christopher Nolan’s backward-narrative structure from Memento to tell a lurid tale of rape…
Directed by. Screenplay by. Starring.
Adolf Hitler killed his own dog. Most of his other evil is well-documented now, and words alone are inadequate anyway, so let’s begin by considering this comparatively microscopic offense. For the many who shower their canines with at least as much affection as they offer other human beings (and often…
The Hunted pits Tommy Lee Jones against Benicio Del Toro in a battle of hand-to-hand, wit-to-wit fighting skills. Frankly, my money would be on Tommy Lee any old day: He may be old, but he’s a tough geezer who looks like he could mop the floor with Benicio. The film…
When Neil Burger’s debut as feature-film writer and director, Interview with the Assassin, was being shopped around more than a year ago, it had many intrigued but few interested enough to buy it for distribution. The theory goes that some distributors, among them Miramax, thought its subject matter felt a…
John Shaft went to Africa, so why shouldn’t Die Hard’s John McClane? In the new action romp Tears of the Sun, Bruce Willis undertakes a jungle-rescue operation on the Dark Continent, and for his part, it’s a McClane adventure in camouflage, minus all the sass and most of the spectacle…
You know Internet dating’s become totally mainstream when Disney cranks out a bland comedy featuring a randomly selected pair of mismatched stars to take on the subject. Bearing the unwieldy and meaningless title Bringing Down the House, said comedy is predicated on the biggest pitfall of cyber-flirting, the idea that…
Uh… yo. The word on the street is that the ‘Drzej is back at the helm. “Who?” you rightfully ask. Why, cinematographer turned director Andrzej Bartkowiak, of course. He’s the… er… “dog” who, under the auspices of producer Joel Silver (Richie Rich, The Matrix) created the hip-hop bang-bang chop-socky flicks…
Why do people engaged in warfare always believe that God endorses their cause and not their opponent’s? The Civil War drama Gods and Generals is filled with so much religious righteousness — endless Bible readings, urgent recitation of prayer, and ardent supplications to the Lord, to say nothing of the…
With 65 features in this year’s Miami International Film Festival, as well as shorts and documentaries, you’d deserve a medal if you caught them all. Festival Director Nicole Guillemet promised to tilt heavily toward Spanish-language or Latin-themed productions, and she has delivered. Spain tops the contributors’ list, but there are…
Right-wing pundits will come out of the woodwork to holler about this one. Bad enough, they’ll say, that The Life of David Gale attacks the death penalty; it also features a caricature governor of Texas with big ears and a familiar, Scripture-quoting smirk. There’s a character who notes that 73…
Astaire & Rogers. Hepburn & Tracy. Heck, Ball & Arnaz, Houston & Washington, or Vardalos & Corbett. Over the decades, Hollywood has proven that its romantic comedies needn’t suck. But alas, they often do, as is the case with How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Clearly, bigwig co-producers…
Anybody who’s cracked open a recent Disney G-rated DVD has probably witnessed the ultimate in sequelmania: on Lilo & Stitch, for instance, the feature was preceded (skippably, thank God) by trailers for The Jungle Book 2, Atlantis 2: Milo’s Return, 101 Dalmatians II: Patch’s London Adventure, Inspector Gadget 2, and…
Although virtually no one in this country foresaw the American disaster in Vietnam, the late British writer Graham Greene glimpsed it with astonishing clarity a decade before the first U.S. “adviser” set foot on Vietnamese soil. The Quiet American, a disturbing and provocative film by Australian director Phillip Noyce based…
