Movie Reviews
Criminal
The Argentine film "Nine Queens" ("Nueve Reinas") played in the United States in 2002 and grossed $1.2 million, respectable for a foreign-language art-house film. I wrote in my review that the film was so wonderfully entertaining that "if (it) were i...
Baptists at Our Barbecue
There is no reason not to like "Baptists at Our Barbecue," but there's no particular reason to like it, either. It's an amiable film, kind of funny in places, not too irritating when it's not funny, and it passes the time pleasantly (if blandly). It ...
Around the Bend
How does a film like "Around the Bend" get national distribution through Warner Independent when dozens of films exactly like it wallow in Sundance obscurity, never to see the light of day outside Park City?
I cite Sundance specifically, but film...
Stage Beauty
Everyone knows, if only from watching "Shakespeare in Love," that female roles in plays were performed by men in Elizabethan England, and women did not appear on stage. Jeffrey Hatcher's play "Compleat Female Stage Beauty," which he has adapted into ...
Tarnation (documentary)
Our modern world of camcorders not only makes everyone a potential filmmaker, it also means that for anyone making a documentary about a particular person, there is probably ample footage of him or her lying around somewhere.
We saw this with "Ca...
Shark Tale
"Shark Tale" probably isn't a copy of "Finding Nemo," since these computer-animated dealies take a long time and the films were in production simultaneously. Still, "Nemo" made it to theaters a year sooner, did the job better, and is by far the bette...
Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry (documentary)
An historic number of political documentaries have appeared this year, most of them attacking the other side rather than promoting their own. But now here's one that's far less negative. "Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry" is, pure and simple...
Ladder 49
Even though firefighters are interesting enough to make every little boy want to be one when he grows up, few films are made about them. I think it's because they're too noble. Cops and doctors -- the other notable life-saving professions that ARE th...
Dig! (documentary)
Plenty of Gen-Xers possessing even mild hipness have heard of the Dandy Warhols, but hardly anyone remembers the Brian Jonestown Massacre. "Dig!" is the documentary that explains why these two bands, who have similar styles and whose members were onc...
The Forgotten
"The Forgotten" is the sort of movie where, once you learn what's really going on, you realize you liked it better when you didn't know. The facts of the movie are so silly, and so full of plot holes, that it takes all the fun out of it.
If you've...
First Daughter
"First Daughter" is a good movie for people who wanted to see "Chasing Liberty" but can't stand Hillary Duff or Mandy Moore, whichever one was in that movie. (They are interchangeable to me.) The movies are really the same film, with the same plot an...
A Dirty Shame
John Waters has made a career out of being distasteful, but his new film, "A Dirty Shame," works so hard at it that you'd think the oily old man has lost his touch. Being raunchy shouldn't be this difficult. Dirty jokes are the EASY ones to come up w...
The Motorcycle Diaries (Spanish)
It is a rare biopic that does not venerate its subject beyond all reason, and "The Motorcycle Diaries" is a rare film. It gives us Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Argentinian revolutionary, in all his youthful, mercurial glory. It suggests a Che who began...
Shaun of the Dead
Someone thought it would be funny to make a comedy that was also a zombie movie -- or perhaps a zombie movie that was also a comedy -- and sure enough, they were right. "Shaun of the Dead" is one of the funniest films of the year, a snappy comedy and...
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
I wish I were 70 years old, so I could say that "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" reminds me of the many Saturdays of my youth that I spent down at the cinema, paying a nickel to watch Dick Tracy movies all day, and how afterward I'd stop at th...
Wimbledon
I get the feeling someone thought of the clever line, "Love means nothing in tennis" and wrote a movie around it. "Wimbledon" combines the clichés of romantic comedies with the clichés of sports movies and comes up with a pleasant, funny, utterly pre...
Head in the Clouds
There are certainly fans of period-piece melodramas, and I know there are people who want to see Charlize Theron and Penelope Cruz become involved in a tickle-fight on top of a bed while clad only in their underwear -- but how much do those two group...
Mr. 3000
I write a weekly column called "Snide Remarks." It is supposed to be funny. The way I usually write it is, on the first draft, I'll just say whatever I have to say in whatever words come to mind. This usually isn't very funny. So on the second draft,...
Silver City
John Sayles' "Silver City" gets off to a fantastic start, then becomes mired in Sayles' weakness for enormous ensemble casts and murky plots. The guy can tell a great story when he wants to, but I guess sometimes he just doesn't want to.
At the ou...
National Lampoon’s Gold Diggers
If I ever make a movie, I'm going to ask the folks at National Lampoon to put their name on it. Apparently, all they require is that your movie be excrementally bad and that you ask politely. I can meet both of those requirements.
Actually, it wou...
Cellular
I often receive phone calls from friends who are standing outside multiplexes trying to decide which movie to see. They have eliminated the ones they've already seen and the ones that don't have a start time that fits their schedule, and now they're ...
Resident Evil: Apocalypse
You know how sometimes you're in an abandoned church, fighting off huge, red, skinless man-beasts that can crawl on walls, and you're out of ammo, and just at the last second a hot chick on a motorcycle crashes through a stained-glass window and save...
What the #$*! Do We Know!?
Here's what we know: We know that "What the #$*! Do We Know!?" is a tedious, faux-philosophical waste of time. We know it is brimming with New Age ideas that violate the laws of both physics and common sense. We know that the filmmakers, William Arnt...
Testosterone
Gay novelist James Robert Baker wrote "Testosterone," which I have not read but which is apparently a dark, gritty, "you gave me HIV and dumped me so now I'm going to kill you" sort of book. (You know the type.) For reasons I can't even imagine, gay ...
The Cookout
Technically, of course, I should not be reviewing "The Cookout" -- not because the studio refused to pre-screen it for critics (though it did), but because it is an African-American comedy and I am a white person.
I was told this by a reader who v...
Paparazzi
After "Paparazzi" flops at the box office, the USA Network should offer a few thousand for broadcast rights and slip it into their rotation of mediocre made-for-TV thrillers. I doubt anyone would notice that a theatrical release had somehow gotten in...
Wicker Park
"Wicker Park" shows the rarely seen negative aspects of stalking -- the obsession, the lying, the breaking and entering and so forth. It's about time Hollywood dealt with this subject matter!
This movie, truth be told, is a little more about obses...
Warriors of Heaven and Earth (Chinese)
If Quentin Tarantino is going to borrow from Asian cinema for his films, it's only fair that Asia should return the favor. "Warriors of Heaven and Earth" is the film John Wayne would have made if he were Mandarin and alive. Chinese filmmaker Ping He ...
Sorry for Kung Fu (Serbo-Croation)
As far as non-American film industries go, Croatia's isn't exactly Bollywood. The Internet Movie Database shows fewer than 600 films to come out of Croatia EVER, and many of those were straight-to-video or TV productions.
So you cut a little slack...
Hero (Chinese)
I hope the people who have been watching DVD or downloaded copies of Zhang Yimou's martial arts film "Hero" will go see it on the big screen, too, once Miramax finally releases it in theaters. I sympathize with their impatience -- Miramax has been si...
Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid
They're calling "Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid" a sequel to the 1997 hit "Anaconda," but it's not one. It has none of the same characters, it's not the same snake, it's set on a different continent, and it has a different director and writ...
The Brown Bunny
Now that I've seen "The Brown Bunny," I'm even more puzzled than before as to why Chloe Sevigny would agree to be in it. If he was being honest, this is all Vincent Gallo could have told her in his initial pitch:
"Hey, Chloe, I've got this movie t...
Suspect Zero
"Suspect Zero" has two good ideas, and it squanders them both. First it asks: What if there were a serial killer who followed no pattern whatsoever and thereby avoided detection? He could go on killing for years and never be caught, for without a pat...
Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2
The people who saw "Baby Geniuses" in 1999 and lived to tell about it should not see its sequel, "Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2," or they run the risk of incurring post-traumatic stress disorder. Whatever progress they have made to rebuild their shatt...
Benji: Off the Leash!
Many dogs have played Benji over the years, and "Benji: Off the Leash!" is the fictionalized story of how the current canine got the job. Since the dog was found and adopted in Mississippi, that's where the film is set, even though it was shot in Uta...
Mean Creek
For all the movies that have been made about teenagers, and even about misguided teenagers with inattentive parents specifically, few have captured kids' interpersonal relationships as insightfully and accurately as Jacob Estes' debut feature "Mean ...
Exorcist: The Beginning
I'll tell you the history of "Exorcist: The Beginning," and you tell me if you're surprised that it sucks.
Originally, John Frankenheimer was going to direct it, but he backed out and then died. He was replaced by Paul Schrader, a very talented sc...
Without a Paddle
You don't know the name Steven Brill, but you should. He's the reason so many movies suck. He wrote "Ready to Rumble," the atrocious David Arquette wrestling comedy from 2000, and he directed Adam Sandler in "Little Nicky" (which he also wrote) and "...
Bright Young Things
I have not read Evelyn Waugh's novel "Vile Bodies," on which the film "Bright Young Things" is based, but seeing the movie makes me think the book must be excellent. The film is a droll Jazz-Age satire of London's privileged, useless young people, wi...
Almost Peaceful (French)
The French film translated and abbreviated "Almost Peaceful" is actually titled "Un monde presque paisible," or "A World Almost Peaceful." It's based on a novel called "Quoi de neuf sur la guerre?" ("What's New About the War?"). These titles suggest,...
Alien vs. Predator
The words "alien" and "predator" are never used in the film "Alien vs. Predator," and in fact both of the headlining monsters could be described with either term. The only way you know which is the "alien" and which is the "predator" is that you've s...
Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Movie
If I understand "Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie" correctly -- and there is every chance I do not -- it is about a card game featuring imaginary monsters and warriors that somehow, in this instance, summons ACTUAL evil beings that threaten mankind. Why would you...
I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead
Were it not for our foreknowledge of the culprit's identity, most of "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" would play like a British version of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit." You got your sex crime, your medical examiner's report of forensic evidence,...
We Don’t Live Here Anymore
If you've often thought you'd like to see four respectable actors scream at each other for 90 minutes, have I got a film for you! "We Don't Live Here Anymore" offers that and little else, forcing its actors -- good actors, the whole lot of them -- to...
The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
To watch "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement," you should be required not just to have seen its predecessor, but to have LOVED it. Merely having liked it will not be sufficient to carry you through the less-focused, more-useless sequel, and if ...
Danny Deckchair
We Yanks have enjoyed quite a few daffy Australian comedies over the years, and I think part of the reason is that, in addition to being so sunny, they're also usually free of any social importance. "Muriel's Wedding," "The Dish," "The Castle" and "M...
Open Water
The marketing people are describing "Open Water" as "'The Blair Witch Project' meets 'Jaws'," and while I usually just find that kind of talk funny -- we all had a laugh when an actor friend of mine was described by a casting agent as "Kramer meets a...
Collateral
How's this for an endorsement: I dislike Jamie Foxx with a strong, violent passion, yet he failed to annoy me in "Collateral."
He plays a relatively believable character here, a Los Angeles taxi driver named Max who's been hacking "temporarily" f...
Saints and Soldiers
Within the genre of films by Mormons, about Mormons, "Saints and Soldiers" is easily the best. It is so superior on almost every level, especially in its technical aspects, that it puts hastily assembled drivel like "Handcart" and "The Home Teachers"...
Little Black Book
A line from Shakespeare's "The Tempest" prefaces "Little Black Book": "Hell is empty. All the devils are here." Properly, it's "Hell is empty and all the devils are here," but when a film starring Brittany Murphy bothers quoting Shakespeare at all, w...
Code 46
The law referred to by the title of "Code 46" is the one that prohibits genetically matched people from conceiving, or even mating. It became necessary after years of cloning and other artificial means of creating life made it impossible to tell whet...
The Manchurian Candidate
Jonathan Demme's last remake, "The Truth About Charlie," was a disappointment, but with his retelling of "The Manchurian Candidate," he gets it right. Not that I want to encourage him to keep re-doing other people's movies instead of coming up with h...
The Village
The tombstone of a boy who has just died tells us the year is 1897, and the simple dress and formal speech of the town's inhabitants remind us of the Amish. They are happy, peaceful folk, the people who live in the village in M. Night Shyamalan's apt...
Thunderbirds
I never saw the original "Thunderbirds" TV series, so I don't know: Was it boring and stupid? Because if it was, then the movie captures it perfectly!
Fans of the show enjoyed its odd, marionette-based acting and what I assume were pleasantly chee...
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
"Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" is a stoner comedy in the grand tradition of, um, "Dude, Where's My Car?," only funnier and snappier. I will tell you without compunction that I laughed many times during the film, and I will add that 90 percen...
Intimate Strangers (French)
NOTE: This review was written without the cooperation of -- indeed, against the wishes of -- Paramount Classics, which at this time denied online film critics access to press screenings of its movies.
"Intimate Strangers" is a talky drama that fee...
Garden State
Zach Braff's appeal on "Scrubs," the NBC series he leads, is his ability to underplay the comedy, to appear befuddled and intimidated as madness surrounds him. Even when performing wacky, silly comedy, he doesn't seem wacky himself.
This same subl...
She Hate Me
The point of Spike Lee's "She Hate Me" seems to be that Spike Lee has made a movie called "She Hate Me." It has a dozen different trains of thought -- everything from homosexuality to politics to race relations to corporate malfeasance -- but none of...
The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (Japanese)
To watch "Zatoichi" (aka "The Blind Swordsman") is to understand a little better what Quentin Tarantino was doing in his "Kill Bill" movies. Here's the blood, the swords, the unexpected humor, the themes of honor and loyalty, oh, and more blood.
...
Ju-On: The Grudge (Japanese)
They're remaking foreign films into English-language ones so fast now that they've lapped themselves: "The Grudge" opens in theaters while "Ju-On: The Grudge," which it is based on, is still playing. I saw them within a week of each other (I saw the ...
The Bourne Supremacy
I wasn't a fan of "The Bourne Identity," because I felt the movie made a lot of noise without really going anywhere. Jason Bourne got chased for the whole film, then there was a finale, then it was over. Never mind that action films seldom matter to ...
Catwoman
If "Catwoman" isn't the worst superhero movie so far, it is certainly the stupidest. It uses every cliche in the genre, and even borrows some from other genres, like the Romantic Comedy Law of Girlfriends, which states that the female lead must have ...
The Adventures of Ociee Nash
"The Adventures of Ociee Nash" is 10 pounds of quaint in a five-pound bag. It is so adorably precious that you'll just wanna love it and squeeze it and put it in a sack and throw it in the lake. If it were a person, you would find it cute for about 1...
I, Robot
Will Smith is the king of the Independence Day cineplex, able to draw in crowds and entertain even tough critics with his wise-guy antics and action heroics. Fourth of July belongs to the Fresh Prince! Because this is 1997, right? What, it's not? 200...
Maria Full of Grace (Spanish)
It occurred to me several times while watching "Maria Full of Grace" that even without looking at the subtitles, and even though I don't speak much Spanish, I could often tell what was going on simply through the actors' body language, vocal inflecti...
A Cinderella Story
Pity Hilary Duff, less pretty and talented than Lindsay Lohan, and also less able to choose good movies to make. (Well, pity Amanda Bynes even more, as she seems to have disappeared altogether, but never mind.) In the race to become the most successf...
The Clearing
The histrionics normally associated with kidnap dramas are not to be found in "The Clearing." No one screams "Give me back my son!" into a phone, nor are there risky ransom-exchange scenarios, nor are there trite explanations for the evil-doers' grud...
De-Lovely
"De-Lovely" keeps making the point that Cole Porter was a fun-loving, carefree man-about-town -- but if that's true, then how come all the scenes involving him and his interpersonal relationships are so dull? They tell us his joie de vivre inspired h...
Touch of Pink
The "gay son comes out to his parents" film has been made, oh, a million times now, and the "son or daughter raised in a modern society rebels against his or her parents' old-world ways" film has been made, oh, two million times. Now we're starting t...
The Door in the Floor
Ted Cole is a writer, and he is everything Americans expect their writers to be. He taps away on an old typewriter, drinks heavily, is gregarious when in public but reclusive when trying to write, behaves eccentrically, wears a beard, and is an unrep...
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
I'm having trouble writing a review for "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy," because everything I write makes me sound like a quote whore. (You know the quote whores: The critics who heap exaggerated praise on even the worst of movies because the...
Sleepover
"Sleepover" is yet another teen wish-fulfillment comedy where the 14-year-old girls in the audience get to pretend the 14-year-old girls on the screen -- the ones staying up late, evading adults, and kissing cute boys -- are themselves. These things ...
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (documentary)
Rock 'n' roll stars of the '70s and '80s spent so much time building up public personas with costumes, makeup and carefully publicized hijinks that it's amusing to see them be deconstructed before our very eyes in this, the Age of Reality. Once the f...
Riding Giants (documentary)
DVD sales for "Riding Giants" will probably be brisk, given the film's popularity and critical success, but I wonder if buyers will be disappointed. If ever a film needed to be seen on the big screen to be appreciated, it's this one. How can you full...
King Arthur
Antoine Fuqua's "King Arthur" assumes the ambitious task of taking the romance and magic out of that familiar tale and giving us a more fact-based account instead. Fans of Camelot and Excalibur and all the sentimental trappings normally associated wi...
Before Sunset
Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) met nine years ago on a train in Austria, spent the day together in Vienna, and parted ways, promising to meet in Vienna in six months. That much you know if you saw "Before Sunrise" (1995), which I did no...
Napoleon Dynamite
"Napoleon Dynamite" is a gloriously quirky, hysterically funny ode to rural dullness that is probably the fairest, most accurate film representation that Preston, Idaho, will ever get.
First-time director Jared Hess, who co-wrote with his wife Jer...
America’s Heart and Soul (documentary)
The problem with "America's Heart & Soul" is not its message, which is that America is a land of opportunity full of diverse, salt-of-the-earth people. The message is fine. The problem is that simply stating a message over and over again for 88 m...
Spider-Man 2
I wrote of the first "Spider-Man" film that it was "probably the best superhero movie ever made." Now comes the sequel, about which I can make the same assertion, but without the "probably": This is the best superhero movie ever made. Period.
"Spi...
The Notebook
I have never read any books by Nicholas Sparks, but I have to believe they are not very good. "The Notebook" is the third one to be adapted for film, after "A Walk to Remember" and "Message in a Bottle," and the third one to be mediocre and treacly. ...
Two Brothers
There is probably no audience for "Two Brothers." It might appeal to children, but it would be too slow-moving for them. Animal-loving adults might take interest, but they would find it overlong and bland every time humans appear onscreen. If its sto...
Fahrenheit 9/11 (documentary)
"Fahrenheit 9/11," the new anti-Bush documentary by Michael Moore, is the second film this year whose reviews can be generally predicted based on the reviewers' personal beliefs.
With "The Passion of the Christ," critics who count themselves as st...
White Chicks
I hope "White Chicks" proves to be the worst movie of the year, simply because I don't want to imagine a movie worse than it. It takes a premise that is unworkable to begin with, stretches it so far that no one will buy it, and then utilizes only the...
The Terminal
Steven Spielberg's "The Terminal" takes you on such a funny, good-natured ride that you forgive its destination being so ordinary and disappointing. Here's a master storyteller at work, delighting us with warm characters and surprises at every turn, ...
Grand Theft Parsons
I direct your attention to this Web page, where the real story of the death and subsequent adventures of Gram Parsons is told. It's a curious tale, to be sure, and it's even more interesting than "Grand Theft Parsons," the likable but slight film tha...
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Dodgeball, we are told by helpful ESPN-8 anchors Cotton McKnight and Pepper Brooks, is the sport that "separates the men from the boys, the ... awkwardly feminine from the possibly Canadian." That there even exists a movie called "Dodgeball: A True U...
Seducing Dr. Lewis (French)
In "Seducing Dr. Lewis," probably at least the one-millionth film ever made about quirky small-town folks, a bunch of quirky small-town folks must convince the titular physician to take up residence there. This is done primarily by deceit, which of c...
Around the World in 80 Days
"Around the World in 80 Days" is an example of modern Hollywood's dumb way of thinking. There is no reason for a congenial Chinese martial arts expert to be in this story, as the Jules Verne novel is about Englishmen and Frenchmen and involves very l...
Garfield: The Movie
"Garfield: The Movie" is faithful to "Garfield" the comic strip in that both are benign, obvious and unfunny. How anyone thought they could get a good movie out of a two-joke comic strip -- 1) the cat is fat; 2) the cat is also lazy -- is beyond me, ...
The Chronicles of Riddick
"The Chronicles of Riddick" is a silly movie, but aren't all fantasy films, really? Most of what happens here is no less believable than, say, a pointy-eared man taking down a gigantic warrior elephant single-handedly in the midst of a massive battle...
The Stepford Wives
The Internet Movie Database classifies "The Stepford Wives" as "comedy/drama/thriller," and I suppose that's part of the film's problem: It doesn't know what it is. It's a comedy mostly, but not a very funny one, and it's too broad to be taken seriou...
Word Wars (documentary)
It's exciting to see what's happening with documentaries these days. 2003 saw a resurgence in success, both critical and popular, in the genre, and now we begin to see a sub-genre: the documentary about competitors in word-based tournaments.
First...
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
With regard to the near-impossible task of making a Harry Potter film that captures all the magic and cleverness of its source material, "The Prisoner of Azkaban" succeeds more thoroughly than either of its predecessors. It is darker and funnier than...
The Story of the Weeping Camel (documentary; Mongolian)
Nothing within "The Story of the Weeping Camel" itself makes it apparent whether it is fact or fiction. Some elements are clearly real and would be difficult to fake convincingly -- I think of the scene in which a camel gives birth and its owners act...
The Corporation (documentary)
Woe betide any conservative who wanders into a screening of this Canadian cautionary film! With sly, mildly irreverent wit and the enthusiasm of cause-happy youth, the eye-opening doc examines what a "corporation" is, how corporations are the dominan...
Raising Helen
I'm told that bringing children into your life is a marvelous way to straighten out your priorities and determine what's really important. I'm told this most often by movies, every time a new one comes out with this theme, which is approximately once...
The Day After Tomorrow
Roland Emmerich's films have depicted America being attacked, at various times, by aliens, Godzilla and the British. Now comes a force even more powerful, even more potentially deadly, with even greater possibilities for being really stupid: the weat...
Soul Plane
More than any film I've ever seen, "Soul Plane" is clearly one comedy sketch idea, stretched out to feature length. Someone in the "Saturday Night Live" (or, more likely, "In Living Color") writers' room might have pitched the sketch this way: "What ...
Saved!
You'd think that in a film where a born-again Christian teenager gets pregnant, the comedy would write itself. But "Saved!," the feature-film debut by Brian Dannelly and Michael Urban, can only mine so many jokes about fundamentalist Christians -- a...
Baadasssss!
If you don't already know the significance of the 1971 film "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" -- how it was the first "blaxploitation" film (predating "Shaft" by a few months), how it helped redefine how blacks were portrayed in the cinema, how it ...
