In calm, measured tones a plummy British voice intones the virtues of the town of Black River Falls, Wisconsin at the end of the 19th centurythe fine fishing, the pure water, the way of life it engenders. Its like listening to the beginning of a fairy tale told by a favorite uncle. Its also a… Read More »
BRIDE AND PREJUDICE
When Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice two hundred or so years ago, she was doing more than telling a story about lovers at cross purposes, she was also dissecting with her society with a deadly precision and wry humor. Gurinder Chadha has taken that classic story and updated it to the multicultural 21st century… Read More »
THE INTERPRETER
My friend Daisy, an enthusiastic but discriminating cinema fan, has a way of summing up her movie-going experiences with a succinct take, and so it was as we exited the preview screening of THE INTERPRETER. It almost seemed, she opined, as though something was on the verge of happening. Alas, director Sydney Pollack’s lugubrious pacing… Read More »
HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE
First, the bad news. HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE, the fourth installment of the Potter tales, is the weakest film in the series so far. The good news is that it’s still a highly entertaining 2 1/2 hours, and one that effortlessly sweeps the audience into that enchanted world of Hogwarts School of… Read More »
UNITED 93
UNITED 93 begins and ends with prayers in Arabic. Those are offered by the terrorists who seized the plane. There are prayers throughout the film as well, some offered in English and all mouthed in wonder, or in terror, or in fear, or in anger. Writer and director Paul Greengrass has kept politics, at least… Read More »
FLUSHED AWAY
FLUSHED AWAY is the rude title of a sometimes rude film, but one that unswervingly hews to an ebullient sense of whimsy. Whimsy is its birthright, this being first-ever CGI Aardman effort, they of Wallace and Grommit fame. Fear not, it uses special software to deliberately include the sorts of imperfections that are inherent in… Read More »
FAST FOOD NATION
Very bad things happen to cattle in Richard Linklater’s FAST FOOD NATION, a feature narrative based on the non-fiction book by Eric Schlosser. In that book, there is a graphic description of how a cow is turned into the burger at the local fast food franchise. The film, co-written by Linklater and Schlosser, is just as… Read More »
STARDUST — DVD
STARDUST, based on Neil Gaiman’s fairy tale novel for grownups by the same name, is a sweeping, whimsical, and sometimes downright terrifying film brought to life with charm and smarts. Charlie Cox as the hero unawares is pitch perfect bumbling through derring-do and fond first love as he traverses terrains as different but equally treacherous… Read More »
CASSANDRA’S DREAM
The funny thing, in the sense of odd rather than comedic, about CASSANDRA’S DREAM is that even though it is filmed in color, it is remembered in black and white. In Woody Allen’s lastest film, he returns to his consideration of morality, this time through the lens of classical Greek tragedy. Two brothers, Ian (Ewan… Read More »
RUN FATBOY RUN
Dennis Doyle (Simon Pegg), the oddball hero of the sweet-and sour-romantic comedy, RUN FATBOY RUN is a man who has lived for five years with the fallout of one bad, impulsive decision. That would be running out, literally, on his fiancée, Libby (Thandie Newton). His >pregnant< fiancée, Libby, and doing it as the guests were… Read More »