As we are warned in the opening number of MEAN GIRLS, this is a cautionary tale of lust, greed, and corruption. What we are not warned about is the seductive power of being the eponymous Queen Bee of the high school clique hierarchy. That is the real story, though screenwriter Tina Fey, who co-stars as… Read More »
HAUNTED MANSION
This is the not the first time that Disney has tried to cinema-ize its Haunted Mansion attraction. That perennial favorite got the film treatment 20 years ago with Eddie Murphy heading an indifferent story and a sentimental subplot that I found to be more interesting than anything involving Mr. Murphy. Alas, this latest attempt fares… Read More »
PINOCCHIO
Just because you >can< render an animated classic into a live-action CGI extravaganza doesn’t mean that you should. Case in point, PINOCCHIO. It’s not an awful film but bringing the animated characters into the real world doesn’t add anything to the story of a little wooden puppet who dreams of being a real boy. Rather,… Read More »
FIRESTARTER
A little game I play while watching very bad movies is imagining the joy I will have during the later conversation that I will have about it with John Wilson, Founder and Head Berry of the Golden Raspberry Awards Foundation during our annual interview. The Razzies, as their award is known, even has a special… Read More »
MEMORY
Based on the delightfully quirky 2003 Belgian film, The Memory of a Killer, MEMORY has the makings of a solid neo-noir. Alas, rather than a tight script to match its excellent visual acuity, MEMORY rambles too much before leading us down the familiar path of corruption in high places and the loss of innocence across… Read More »
AMBULANCE
If Michael Bay is smart, and having a long career as, essentially, a one-trick pony, leads us to believe he must be, he will cast Olivia Stambouliah in all his films from now on. As Lieutenant Dhazghig, the crack surveillance officer in charge of keeping track of where the rogue, and eponymous subject of Bay’s… Read More »
DEATH ON THE NILE
And so with DEATH ON THE NILE (2022), we learn about the man behind the moustaches. That would be Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie’s cerebral Belgian detective devoted to his “little grey cells” and keeping order in the world. The former gets short shrift, mention-wise, in this adaptation, while the latter rears its compulsive head in… Read More »
IT
The evil that lurks in the sewers beneath Derry, Maine, has nothing on the evil lurking in the homes of that community.
BEN-HUR
Any version of BEN-HUR has a great deal to live up to with the chariot race that is the climax of the story’s action. Well, until now, but more about that later. Timur Bekmambetov’s retelling does, indeed, get the chariot race right. It’s one of the few things that are right with this curiously inert… Read More »
Gary Oldman on Inspiration, Stillness, and Bedroom Acting.
Click here to listen to the interview. Gary Oldman is an actor known for disappearing into his roles, and playing George Smiley, a spymaster known for being able to disappear into the background is a tour de force for him. When I spoke to him on November 16, 2011, I was most interested in asking… Read More »