Those familiar with HAMLET will find some familiar things in Robert Eggers’ THE NORTHMAN, and that is no coincidence. The source material for both is Sjón’s Gesta Danorum (circa 1200) about a prince with both mommy issues and a usurping uncle. Where Shakespeare adapted the story to his time creating an elegantly and eloquently melancholy… Read More »
THE UPSIDE
It is with great relief that I report on an American remake of a fine French film that doesn’t drain me of the will to live. After DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS and FATHER’S DAY, the travesties of which haunt me to this very day, Neil Burger’s THE UPSIDE captures most of the essence of what made… Read More »
AQUAMAN
The good news is that Momoa and his mammoth charm more than carry a film that is decidedly not the most original of super-hero tales.
Just Try to Resist PADDINGTON
There is a certain trepidation that accompanies any screening of a film released in January. This is the graveyard of films that failed to meet studio expectations, but that for some reason or another, are due a theatrical release. There is even more trepidation when the film is one aimed at children. How bad, one… Read More »
AUSTRALIA
Baz Luhrmann has a great deal to say about his native Australia, and he has very ambitiously attempted to say it all in one film. It’s a bold choice more admirable in the intention than in the execution. He has essentially grafted two separate films together, one an over-the-top homage to adventure films from the… Read More »
JUST GO WITH IT
Evincing a sense of humor that would be the envy of a first-grader, Adam Sandler once again assaults the concept of humor in JUST GO WITH IT. Predictable is perhaps the least of the faults to be found here, combined as that is with a fixation on excretion, and with tedious direction from Sandler regular… Read More »
THE HOURS
THE HOURS begins with a suicide, a famous one at that. Virginia Woolf with a fierce deliberateness puts a heavy stone in her pocket and walks into a river. We see her head duck silently into the water and then her body floating delicately away, pulled by the current with a gentle urgency. By the… Read More »
COLD MOUNTAIN
If you already know that war is hell, then you can safely give COLD MOUNTAIN, based on the critically acclaimed novel of the same name by Charles Frazier, a miss and save that almost three hours of your life for something else. If for a reason unfathomable by me you need the lesson driven home for… Read More »
THE OTHERS
Are there things that are more scary than ghosts? Are close encounters with the other side, as it were, the ultimate in terror? Writer/director Alejandro Amenabar does a neat job of answering that question with THE OTHERS, a ghost story where neither good nor evil should be taken for granted. The story takes place entirely… Read More »
STEPFORD WIVES, THE
The occasional burst of witty dialogue in THE STEPFORD WIVES does nothing to justify this misogynistic screed that will in all probability set the Womens Movement back by about 150 years. It doesnt do much to bolster the image of men, either. Or kids, pets, supermarkets, suburbs or the art and science of housekeeping. Not… Read More »