“Fat Actress”, the pseudo adventures of Kirstie Alley coping with life as something considerably more than a size 2, is a guilty pleasure that has enough smarts to it to quell any feelings of guilt. True, it’s not as sharp as Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” on HBO, another fictionalized, “true-life” improvised series to which… Read More »
CINDERELLA MAN
Showing a lack of imagination and a willingness to mine every applicable sports cliché that is stunning in several senses of the word, Ron Howard has taken one of the greatest comeback stories ever and turned it into a cloying bit of fluff. CINDERELLA MAN is handsomely mounted, steeped in period art direction, and features… Read More »
THE ADVENTURES OF SHARK BOY AND LAVA GIRL IN 3-D
After seeing THE ADVENTURES OF SHARK BOY AND LAVA GIRL IN 3-D, the only conclusion to be drawn is that its maker, Robert Rodriguez, got lucky with his first foray into the land of kid films. That would be SPY KIDS, a perfectly splendid blend of fantasy elements and genuine family values. The subsequent installments… Read More »
IRAQ — THE UNTOLD STORIES
Mike Shiley’s IRAQ: THE UNTOLD STORIES shows just that. This self-proclaimed non-journalist, Shiley reports on things that the professional journalists working in Iraq wouldn’t, or couldn’t, discover. He’s a genial host, talking directly to the camera between three-minute clips of the footage he shot, expanding on his experiences in Iraq, experiences that range from the… Read More »
BATMAN BEGINS
Superheroes say much about the culture that spawned them, and so it is with the various incarnations of Batman. In the 60s, he was a pop icon with more than a little camp fluttering around his satin go-go boots. In the 80s and 90s, it was a wallow in excess with sets that duked it… Read More »
MR AND MRS SMITH
MR. AND MRS. SMITH probably started life as a script that was a very clever satire on the state of modern matrimony. What finally made it to the screen, however, is instead a schlocky vehicle for its stars, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. There are a few moments when one sees a dash of savvy… Read More »
BEWITCHED
The funniest thing in BEWITCHED is an oddly touching attachment Will Ferrell’s character, Jack Wyatt, develops for a bottle of ketchup he picked up during an off-screen interlude in New Mexico. It’s barely mentioned, but there it is in a couple of scenes, clutched tenaciously the way a kid clutches his blankie in times of… Read More »
WAR OF THE WORLDS
There is a litany of inevitables in Steven Spielberg’s version of WAR OF THE WORLDS. There’s humanity turning on itself in a desperate scramble for survival. There are the vistas of CGI presenting hordes of extra-terrestrial killing machines cutting a swath across cities, suburbs and points rural. There are the seething tensions between an emotionally… Read More »
FANSTASTIC FOUR
It’s Ioan Gruffudd for whom I feel the most sorry. He’s a fine British actor who distinguished himself in, among other efforts, the most recent television adaptation of THE FORSYTE SAGA. In FANTASTIC 4, he’s relegated to the role of an earnest, if super smart, beagle. As the first installment of what the studio… Read More »
DARK WATER
Anyone who has had to deal with the terrors of a leaky roof or faulty plumbing will find much to raise goosebumps, to cause the averting of the eyes, and, perhaps, to inspire one or two flashbacks to those unfortunate interludes while viewing DARK WATER. And if this were the intent of the makers of… Read More »
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