There’s nothing wrong with a fluffy film that doesn’t try to be anything more than what it is: a pleasant way to pass the time. Executed well, it can offer a welcome break from the mundane and such is MUSIC AND LYRICS. Delicately spun and deftly acted, it’s a harmless trifle that amuses and sometimes delights. Hugh Grant is Alex,… Read More »
BREACH
In a moment of supreme and unintentional irony, Robert Hanssen, the quarry in BREACH, tells his assistant, Eric O’Neill, who doesn’t know yet what his real assignment concerning Hanssen is, that he was never interested in making headlines, only history. Of course, they will shortly be making both, but neither of them is aware of that yet.… Read More »
GHOST RIDER
GHOST RIDER is the first guilty pleasure of 2007. Driven along strictly by the personalities involved, never surrendering to an internal logic that might slow things down to bring them back to earth, it barrels along a dicey path between camp and melodrama and rises above them both while never for a moment demanding to be… Read More »
THE BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA
THE BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA is an exquisite children’s film marketed at older kids, and thereby in danger of losing the adult demographic, an audience that would love it as much, if not more, than those kids. Though it directly addresses the darker side of being a kid, bullies, parents who aren’t perfect, it also speaks… Read More »
GRAY MATTERS
GRAY MATTERS, alas, doesn’t. At least not when it comes to making a comedy about the heartbreak of love. It is, rather, a collection of fragments of ideas that fail to coalesce in any meaningful way. The result is dull, contrived, obvious, and at 96 minutes, seemingly endless. Heather Graham and Thomas Cavanagh play Sam… Read More »
THE ASTRONAUT FARMER
With THE ASTRONAUT FARMER, the Polish Brothers (Michael directing, Mark acting, and both writing the script) use a folksy veneer to their mythmaking that belies a sly sophistication, weaving together Joseph Campbell at his most profound with the spirit of The Little Engine That Could. The result is a film that explores not just the… Read More »
THE NUMBER 23
It’s one thing when a film is bad from the very start. There is an honesty about it, a candor that is, in its own small way, praiseworthy. The same cannot be said about THE NUMBER 23. Instead of breaking one’s heart merely by being bad, it commits the far more heinous offense of offering… Read More »
PREMONITION
Blithely unfettered by internal logic, exhibiting the pacing of a banana slug, and boasting a heroine who makes Betty Crocker seem like a radical feminist, PREMONITION is exactly the reason that the Razzie Awards exist. Dishonoring the premise of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five”, it stars Sandra Bullock as Linda, a woman who comes unstuck in time.… Read More »
ZODIAC (2007)
The pedestrian way to film the story of ZODIAC, the San Francisco Bay Area serial killer whose rampage extended from the late 1960s through the 1970s, would be to make a taut action thriller with snazzy directing tricks and gung-ho dialogue. Here was a psychopath who hunted people for sport and through a combination of smarts… Read More »
300
300 is a remarkable achievement. Of what, exactly, is a subject open to debate. Visually, it is arresting and beautiful in a Grand Guignol way. In fact, speaking strictly in aesthetic terms, it is a masterpiece. Speaking strictly in terms of tone, mood, and dialogue, well, that’s another matter entirely and one that is uneven at best.… Read More »
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