Before seeing GRIDIRON GANG, I would have said that given the right sort of role, one with action, a greater or lesser dash of comedy, and no stretching of a thespian nature, that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is a fine screen presence but not much more. I have been proved wrong. There’s humor and a… Read More »
THE BLACK DAHLIA
There are so many missteps in Brian De Palma’s THE BLACK DAHLIA that one hardly knows where to start. Perhaps the best place is with the adaptation of James Ellroy’s novel of the same name. The book is a rich and vibrant work that provides too much fodder for a two-hour film to capture. Instead… Read More »
ALL THE KING’S MEN
ALL THE KING’S MEN is so swept up in being an important and timely film that it somehow never quite gets around to being either, much less both. It’s the second film based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Robert Penn Warren, who took his inspiration and bit more from the life of Louisiana’s flamboyant… Read More »
THE DEPARTED
With THE DEPARTED, Martin Scorsese has taken a good film, the Hong Kong minor classic INFERNAL AFFAIRS, and remade it into a movie that is as bloated as it is bland. Gone is the dramatic tension of a slick action flick, gone is the suspenseful psychological subtext that pondered the nature of identity, subsumed into… Read More »
UNITED 93 — DVD
In the course of the commentary track by writer/director Paul Greenglass, he answers those who thought that it was too soon to make a film about UNITED 93. It’s not too soon, he says, it’s high time. As with the feature film release of UNITED 93, the DVD is also a tribute to the people who… Read More »
MARIE ANTOINETTE
The first image in Sofia Coppola’s latest film is of title character, MARIE ANTOINETTE, having a slipper put on her dainty foot by a servant as she dips her finger into the neon-pink icing of a multi-layer cake. She licks her finger, and then turns to look directly into the camera with a wink and… Read More »
FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS
FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, based on the book of the same name by James Bradley and Ron Powers, begins with the line “Every jackass thinks he knows what war is, especially those who have never been in one.” That may or may not be a swipe at the current administration, but it is definitely the… 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 »
BOBBY
It pains me to have to slam a film that so obviously has its heart in the right place, but BOBBY is such an inept and misguided effort that there’s no other option. Taking place on the day when and in the place where, the Ambassador Hotel, that the title character was assassinated, it’s a… Read More »
BLOOD DIAMOND
BLOOD DIAMOND wants to be so many things, including an action film, an adventure epic, a love story, and an indictment of what soulless exploitation has done to Sierra Leone. It takes 2 ½ hours or so, but still doesn’t have the emotional tug that it should by the time the final credits roll. Set… Read More »
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