Eric Steel’s documentary THE BRIDGE is strong stuff, taking as it does the taboos of both death and of suicide and focusing on them without flinching. Almost the first image on screen is that of an anonymous someone stepping over the railing of the Golden Gate Bridge and while the world goes on around him,… 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 »
SLITHER — DVD
SLITHER has perhaps the worst poster of any terrific film released in 2006. It may have actually kept people away, what with the way its space slugs converging on a bathtub cradling a classically nubile nymphette. It fails in every respect to convey the wicked humor and superbly self-aware irony that permeates every frame of… Read More »
BORAT
The most important thing to know about BORAT is that you will be appalled by what you see, and then you will be appalled by the way it makes you laugh. Uproariously. And with wild abandon. The only down side to seeing this film based on a character by Sacha Baron Cohen, and played by… Read More »
HARSH TIMES
In HARSH TIMES Christian Bale and Freddy Rodriguez troll the seamiest streets of Los Angeles looking for trouble and usually finding it. If this sounds very much like writer David Ayer’s earlier screenplay, TRAINING DAY, that’s because it is. In fact, it plays like the bits and pieces that didn’t make the final edit of… Read More »
SHADOWBOXER — DVD
SHADOWBOXER is that most wonderful of films, the kind that works on every level, but can’t be easily pigeonholed. If the usual pitch session is one line to sum up a script, the pitch for this would have to run to several pages and even then wouldn’t capture what is best about it. Director Lee Daniels… Read More »
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION, like the other films co-concocted by Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy, WAITING FOR GUFFMAN, BEST IN SHOW, and A MIGHTY WIND, is a wry exercise in improvisation by an intrepid cast working from scenarios and guided only by their imagination and daring. These pieces (Guest deplores the word “mockumentary”) tell the tales of ordinary-seeming folk… Read More »
JONESTOWN: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE PEOPLE’S TEMPLE
It seems odd that there hasn’t been a film made about what happened in Jonestown in 1978 since the early 80s, the events of that time put such a scar on the national psyche. Whatever the reason for that, Stanley Nelson’s JONESTOWN: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE PEOPLE’S TEMPLE more than makes up for… 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 »
CASINO ROYALE
At one point in CASINO ROYALE, the 21st official entry in the Bond franchise, the villain of the piece (Mads Mikkelsen) sets to work torturing 007 with little more than a rattan chair and a length of rope. The simple things, he opines, are the most effective. And so it is with this new take… Read More »
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