PLAYING FOR KEEPS is a slow drip of a movie that refuses to make up its mind about what it wants to be as it circles the drain. Less than the sum of its parts, it essays the rom-com, the domestic drama, and the heartwarming personal redemption genres all at once, and manages to hit… Read More »
BROKEN CITY
There is a scene in BROKEN CITY that serves as the perfect metaphor for the entire film. In it, corrupt New York Mayor Hostetler (Russell Crowe), and Billy Taggert (Mark Wahlberg), an ex-cop, are having an informal meeting to discuss the former hiring the latter to tail his wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones), whom he suspects of… Read More »
CHICAGO
Just when you thought we’d lost the knack for producing a live-action musical film here in the States, along comes CHICAGO. Set in 1920s in that toddling town, this hard-as-nails tale of sex, politics, fame, and most of all jazz, is a big, splashy, brassy confection wrapped up in a bow with enough bugle beads… Read More »
SINBAD: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SEAS
Dreamworks has taken a novel approach to their latest animated film, SINBAD: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SEAS. The studio has done an homage not just to adventure films from the 1950s, but more specifically, to the B adventure films from that era. Not that that’s a bad thing, they were fun in a kitschy way,… Read More »
INTOLERABLE CRUELTY
When the Coen Brothers get it right, there are no better filmmakers going, and with INTOLERABLE CRUELTY, they are at the top of their game. With an irreverent touch, they spin a tale of true love that includes all the melodrama, farce, and heartbreak that such a condition is oft wont to engender while still… Read More »
TERMINAL, THE
THE TERMINAL is another cloying schmaltz-fest from Tom Hanks aided and abetted by Steven Spielberg. The premise is based on the true story of a man without a country stuck at a Paris airport for years on end living by his wits and the kindness of strangers. So much to work with, including the kind… Read More »
NO RESERVATIONS
NO RESERVATIONS is a prime example of everything that is wrong with Hollywood remakes of terrific foreign language films. Take challenging characters, piquant situations, homogenize the high heckola out of them and, poof, everything that was wonderful in the original is gone. To be fair, even without knowing MOSTLY MARTHA, said original, there is little… Read More »
SIDE EFFECTS
The great problem with talking about Steven Soderberghs latest (and putatively his last) film, SIDE EFFECTS, is that it would be criminal to give away any of the fiendishly clever plot twists involved. This is an elegantly executed sleight-of-hand that hinges on something most people have never thought about: why is it, exactly, that we… Read More »