At some point during an action/adventure/thriller flick, the audience is forced to make a choice about the suspension of disbelief. If the film in question is either a strict, but smartly written procedural or an over-the-top fantasy, such decisions are easy. Think the impudent hyperbole of 24 or the taut psychological games of BREACH. Alas,… Read More »
THE SITUATION
There is room for heartbreak but precious little for sentiment in Philip Haas’ THE SITUATION and its look at a particular time during the United States’ occupation of Iraq. Based on the experiences of journalist Wendy Steavenson, it is a stark film done in an almost documentary style that dwells on the contradictions of the… Read More »
GRINDHOUSE
The mission of GRINDHOUSE is to recreate the magic of a night out at the sort of cheesy exploitation films that proliferated 40 years ago or so. Hence, there is a double bill, coming attractions, even an ad for a local eatery. It’s one of those ideas that sounds irresistible. In execution, it makes for… Read More »
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN — AT WORLD’S END
It’s as though the people involved with PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END gave a great deal of thought to where exactly they hadn’t taken their heroes, villains, and Jack Sparrow, who is both and neither. Singapore, for one, and so the sequence in the seamier parts of that location. The polar climes, and… Read More »
BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA — DVD
THE BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA is easily one of the most beautiful films of this year. A paean to the transcendent power of imagination, it is a story about children coming to terms with not fitting in with their peers as well as the shortcomings of the adults in their lives, but it is anything but… Read More »
Chris and Paul Weitz Talk ABOUT A BOY
Chris and Paul Weitz were the directors of the wildly successful AMERICAN PIE. I was suitably impressed that they were able to switch successfully from broad farce to an insightful, even sensitive, comedy about a man who refuses to grow up and a boy who had no choice in the matter. Talking with them, it quickly became apparent that… Read More »
HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX
There is something as magical about the sequels in the Harry Potter series as there is about the witches and wizards who inhabit the Harry Potter universe. Bucking the tradition of sequels getting weaker with each addition, HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX continues the track record of its predecessors, building on what… Read More »
THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM isn’t so much a thriller as a race, a breakneck one, with no quarter given for anyone wanting to catch his or her breath, much less anyone keeping track of the internal logic at work here. Secret meetings in Turin, heartfelt confessions in Paris, sudden changes of allegiance in Madrid, and a… Read More »
THE NANNY DIARIES
THE NANNY DIARIES rises above its whiffenpoof premise of a middle-class anthropologist charting the strange and treacherous milieu of an unfamiliar culture and comes up with something that is almost but not quite substantial. The anthropologist in question is the eponymous nanny, and the culture is the Upper East Side New York society in which… Read More »
THE LAST LEGION
THE LAST LEGION tries to ride the coat tails of the Arthurian romances with a new take on who Arthur was, where his sword Excalibur came from, and how the Roman empire involved itself in mixing it all up into a proto-Camelot. And it does all of this without cracking an R rating. That, in… Read More »
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