Movie Reviews
The Five Obstructions (Danish)
As I'm SURE you're aware, Danish filmmaker Jørgen Leth made a 12-minute absurdist short called "The Perfect Human" in 1967. Surely you have seen this film numerous times and have pondered its significance in the history of Danish cinema.
Sorry, I'...
Control Room (documentary)
When the war in Iraq began, President Bush referred to Al Jazeera as "the mouthpiece for Osama bin Laden." Donald Rumsfeld frequently called the Qatar-based news channel, the CNN of the Middle East, "anti-U.S. propaganda"; Iraq's information minister...
Shrek 2
"Shrek" was a lark, a satirical cartoon with little depth. It existed mostly just to NOT be something: to not be Disney, to not be syrupy, to not be polite. That a sequel to such a one-shot idea could expand on its predecessor without merely repeatin...
Coffee and Cigarettes
Ordinary people don't generally go for Jim Jarmusch's quirky indie films, and while "Coffee and Cigarettes" won't be the one to earn him a huge mainstream audience, it is accessible in a harmless, unpretentious sort of way.
It is, simply, 11 separ...
Troy
While the somewhat-familiar story of Helen of Troy is an epic about love and war, the spectacular-looking new film version is mostly just about war, with love merely lurking in the fringes. This is a huge movie, bearing the DNA of films like "Titanic...
Breakin’ All the Rules
"Breakin' All the Rules" is boring, and all the people in it are stupid. I wish I could leave it at that, but I have a job to do. Sigh.
What writer/director Daniel Taplitz has written is a farce, except no one told him, and so he keeps directing i...
The Mudge Boy
We learn in "The Mudge Boy" that you can calm a chicken by putting its head in your mouth. This raises fascinating questions.
1) Why would that calm the chicken? Does it remind her of being in the egg or something?
2) Why would you WANT to calm...
Van Helsing
"Van Helsing" feels like it was based on a particularly dumb comic book, but it wasn't. Its source material was the basic stories of Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolfman, and the rather cool idea of a monster-hunter wandering through Europe dispatch...
New York Minute
In "New York Minute," a film that went by the working title of "Jailbait: The Movie," Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen play twin sisters who become involved in a series of simple-minded Big Apple hijinks that leave them clad only in bath towels for a few m...
Super Size Me (documentary)
Morgan Spurlock has Michael Moore's provocateur mentality, sharp sense of humor and mischievous good nature, without Moore's obnoxiousness or unsightly slovenliness.
It is that last point, in fact, that is the focus of "Super Size Me," Spurlock's...
Laws of Attraction
In the case of The People v. "Laws of Attraction," we find the defendant guilty of being a crappy movie and sentence it to death at the box office.
This is a sad case of When Bad Movies Happen to Good Actors. Pierce Brosnan cuts a rakish figure as...
Envy
I need to tell you up front that "Envy" is not funny, which is generally a major liability for a comedy. But I found it strangely watchable. It didn't annoy me or bore me the way most unfunny comedies do. Instead, I felt compelled to see it through: ...
Mean Girls
Viewers of "Saturday Night Live" enjoy Tina Fey's lethal mix of sass and intelligence each week on the "Weekend Update" segment. But Fey is also "SNL's" head writer, which means she approves an awful lot of bad material for every episode. Luckily, we...
Godsend
If you're going to make a movie about cloning a dead kid, and how weird stuff starts happening once Kid 2.0 reaches the age where Kid 1.0 died -- well, if you're going to do that, you have to expect that things are going to get silly. Absurdity is pr...
The Saddest Music in the World
The great bane of independent filmmaking is pretention, often manifested as the "weird just for the sake of being weird" syndrome. Some directors, especially novice ones, believe incomprehensibility is the same thing as depth, and they imbue their fi...
Touching Wild Horses
"Touching Wild Horses" is a bad, wholesome movie about a sullen child who goes to live with his stern aunt when his family is killed in a car accident. She has a million rules, and she doesn't like children. So what brings them together? Touching the...
Man on Fire
"Man on Fire" wants to be more than an ordinary kidnapped-child drama, and more than an ordinary revenge thriller, and I think it succeeds. It has just enough weight and depth to feel like it means something. I don't think it actually DOES mean anyth...
Rhinoceros Eyes
"Rhinoceros Eyes" would have made a great short film, and ought to have been one. It has characters who are quirky but ultimately flat, a whacked-out premise that can't sustain itself for 90 minutes, and a few cool ideas. Trim this sucker down to 20 ...
13 Going on 30
"I want to look like THOSE people," 13-year-old Jenna Rink says, pointing to the pictures in a fashion magazine called Poise.
"Oh, those aren't people, honey," her mother replies. "Those are models."
Ah, wisdom. Thus begins "13 Going on 30," a...
Twilight Samurai (Japanese)
"Twilight Samurai" is to Japanese samurai flicks what Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" was to American Westerns. It belongs to its violent genre even as it espouses a philosophy of anti-violence, and it spotlights characters who are far more thoughtful ...
Kill Bill: Volume 2
Watching a Quentin Tarantino film, one is struck by the exactness of the dialogue he writes. There are no throw-away lines, no wasted chatter. You get the feeling everything you hear on the screen is word-for-word, with nothing improvised by the acto...
The Punisher
Who wants to see a movie about a guy who takes it upon himself to punish people? Fighting for justice and capturing bad guys is one thing; that's what superheroes are supposed to do. But actually PUNISHING them? That's for the courts, dude. LEARN YOU...
Connie and Carla
In writing "Connie and Carla," Nia Vardalos should have cut right to the chase and named the characters Lucy and Ethel. The wacky shenanigans, the outrageous costumes, the lunkish menfolk, the celebrity guests -- this is "I Love Lucy," right? It's ab...
A Thousand Clouds of Peace (Spanish)
If Fellini and Bergman mated and produced a semi-talented gay Mexican son, he might be Julian Hernandez, whose second film "A Thousand Clouds of Peace" is a ponderous, quiet little mess that has nothing to say and no idea how to say it anyway.
I t...
Young Adam
There is clearly more to "Young Adam" than I am getting. The title, for example. No one in the movie is named Adam, so it must be symbolic. Used in that sense, "Adam" usually refers to the world's first man, an unspoiled creature who lived a life of ...
The Alamo
It's no wonder "Remember the Alamo!" is spoken so often as a rallying cry. If the new film depicting the battle fought there is any indication, it's a pretty easy place to forget. Because apparently, NOTHING HAPPENED.
Could this be the dullest war...
The Girl Next Door
Where most good films spend their time developing one clearly defined path -- cold woman learns to love, sad man finds happiness, old miser becomes generous, etc. -- "The Girl Next Door" undertakes several such threads. Characters develop and mature ...
The Whole Ten Yards
I saw "The Whole Nine Yards" and paid enough attention to it to write a review, yet I remember nothing about it. Even reading the review doesn't jog my memory. But here's this sequel, cleverly called "The Whole Ten Yards," and if the B- grade I gave ...
Ella Enchanted
To watch the witless, ham-fisted attempt at fairy-tale romance that is "Ella Enchanted," you'd never know the book it's based on is actually rather clever and charming. The travesty of the film -- which I hasten to add would be a bad movie even witho...
I’m Not Scared (Italian)
Miramax continues to mishandle its foreign films in the instance of "I'm Not Scared," an excellent Italian drama that Miramax for some reason is marketing as a thriller. The film's poster, which I first saw upon exiting a screening of the film, says,...
Johnson Family Vacation
"Johnson Family Vacation" is a paralyzingly unfunny and desperate comedy. It dulls the senses and aggravates the mind. There hasn't been a movie this painful to watch since "The Passion of the Christ."
It stars Cedric the Entertainer as Nate Johns...
The United States of Leland
What we have in "The United States of Leland" is a pessimistic film with the aura of an optimistic one. The glossy cinematography, the acoustic guitar soundtrack, the themes of life and death -- it all sounds like something that will be affirming and...
The Prince and Me
OK, listen up. "The Prince & Me" goes wrong in a number of ways, so we need to get right to it or we'll never finish.
First, Julia Stiles is dour and humorless. She strikes me as a 45-year-old woman stuck in the body of a 23-year-old. This sui...
Hellboy
The top-secret weapon at the top-secret Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense is named Hellboy. He's a strong, red-hued man with horns (which he files down), a tail, and a huge right hand made of stone. He was found by the U.S. military in 1944, ...
Home on the Range
Disney started using "name" actors for key roles in its animated films as early as 1955, with Peggy Lee taking the lead in "Lady and the Tramp." But it wasn't until the late '60s that the idea of pairing recognizable voices with animated characters w...
Walking Tall
"Walking Tall" is said to be "inspired by a true story," but that's a stretch. In reality, it was inspired by the 1973 film of the same name, and THAT movie was inspired by a true story. What actually happened to Sheriff Buford Pusser bears only pass...
Jersey Girl
Kevin Smith is listed as writer and director on "Jersey Girl," but surely it can't be THE Kevin Smith. Not the un-Hollywood maverick Kevin Smith who gave us the rambling anarchy of "Clerks," or the subversive parody of "Dogma," or the dead-on Hollywo...
Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
Surely everyone enjoys seeing a cartoon dog light his own farts on fire as a means of staving off an enemy. And who doesn't think it's funny when a knight in armor is kicked in the crotch and he says, "Ooh! Right in the round tables!"?
Because the...
The Ladykillers
There is no swearing permitted in the home of Marva Munson, an elderly, church-going African-American woman in a small Mississippi town. No smoking, either. And though it is not specifically mentioned, one assumes it is also forbidden for a band of t...
Dogville
As I reflect on "Dogville," Lars von Trier's pretentious 3-hour dark fable, I'm excited by its ideas. Such theatricality! Such social commentary! Such drama! Why, someone could make a great movie out of these ideas.
Someday, maybe someone will. V...
Taking Lives
If you want further evidence that Hollywood is an absurd, illogical place, look at, but do not attempt to touch, Angelina Jolie. She has appeared in 20 films now, 19 of which have been average or worse. ("Girl, Interrupted" is the lone stand-out, and...
Dawn of the Dead
While George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) still holds up today as a stark, frightening monster-movie masterpiece, his 1978 follow-up "Dawn of the Dead" doesn't earn much love from me. It has a number of wonderfully shocking moments, ...
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Entertainment Weekly theorized in its post-Oscar issue that, due to factors like the Oscar broadcast being moved up to February and the brouhaha over screener tapes of to-be-considered movies, all the Oscar-bait films would no longer be released in D...
Intermission
"Intermission" reminds me of "Love Actually," but with most of the romance and charm removed, and some violence added. It's an amusing film, and a likable one, but its ensemble of characters almost universally fails to engage our emotions the way it ...
Noi the Albino (Icelandic)
The first images of "Noi the Albino" are of the title character, a 17-year-old Icelandic boy, digging him and his grandmother out of their home following a massive -- and, we gather, not infrequent -- snowstorm. Thus the isolation and claustrophobia ...
Greendale
Everyone knows rock stars shouldn't make movies, but that goes double for old, drug-addled ones like Neil Young. I respect the heck out of the guy's music, but his directorial skills are so lacking, it's an insult to the word "lacking."
"Greendale...
Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London
I believe I am not the only one for whom the novelty of movies about teenage spies has worn off, though maybe that is more a hope than a belief. Even the last "Spy Kids" movie was mediocre; that franchise's rip-offs, like "Catch That Kid" and "Agent ...
Spartan
David Mamet writes dialogue that doesn't quite reflect how people really talk, but that doesn't quite sound fake, either. It's full of stops and starts and figures of speech, and it makes his plays and movies colorful, to say the least.
But more i...
Broken Wings (Hebrew)
The characters in "Broken Wings" want to fly. This desire seems literal with some characters and metaphoric with others as writer/director Nir Bergman shows them standing on the tops of walls, sitting on balconies, and even leaping from the rims of e...
Secret Window
If you're not tired of hearing people go on and on about Johnny Depp, let me ramble just a little about how glad I am that he's apparently decided to start doing more purely commercial, mainstream films. He's always been a reliably quirky performer, ...
Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself
Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig scored with her last picture, "Italian for Beginners," which depicted some hapless types fumbling their way through lives that were humorous but tinged with sadness. Her new film, "Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself," attempt...
James’ Journey to Jerusalem (Hebrew/Zulu)
In the field of comedies about religious pilgrimages, "James' Journey to Jerusalem" reigns supreme. (Admittedly, I don't know how much competition there is in this genre.) It's a deceptively gentle social satire brimming with likable performances and...
Starsky & Hutch
Is it wrong to laugh a lot at a movie but still come out of it thinking it should have been funnier? Is that just being greedy? Because that's the effect "Starsky & Hutch" had on me.
Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson are a reliable on-screen pair -...
Hidalgo
There was, apparently, a time in history when people would get really snobby if they found out your horse didn't have a pristine lineage. I guess in a horse-based society, it was easy to tell what kinds of horses worked best and which ones were super...
The Reckoning
(Note: This review was done 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.)
Those two old favorites, murder and conspiracy,...
Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights
It is hard not to smile at a movie as simple as "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights." The characters are basic, their motivations are clear, the complications are straightforward, and the resolutions are easily arrived at. It's like a children's story, but...
Broken Lizard’s Club Dread
The comedy troupe Broken Lizard's new "Club Dread" belongs to a genre that has not been explored very often: It is a true horror comedy.
It has elements that parody slasher films, a la "Scary Movie" and the "Scream" series, but it's not really a s...
Twisted
There is a character in "Twisted" who I correctly identified as the killer within one minute of his or her arrival in the film. A critic friend of mine did the same thing, and another of our colleagues beat us both, identifying the killer just by wat...
Good Bye Lenin! (German)
When I was a kid, I hated taking naps during the day because I was afraid I'd miss something. I can only imagine how I'd feel if I were German and slept through the fall of the Berlin Wall.
That's what Christiane Kerner does in "Good Bye Lenin!,"...
The Passion of the Christ
If there were an extraordinarily powerful six-hour miniseries about the life of Jesus, "The Passion of the Christ" would be the gripping two-hour finale. It begins with the Garden of Gethsemane and ends with his death and resurrection -- a short spac...
Teknolust
"Teknolust" uses color and other visual devices to create a wholly imaginative world of the near future, where cloning is close to being a reality. The film has a familiar plot -- someone creates/discovers/unleashes a Doppelganger of himself -- but w...
Against the Ropes
I hate to keep harping on Meg Ryan, but seriously, Meg Ryan, when are you going to be in a good movie?
I feel bad for you, getting pigeonholed into the cute-and-perky roles and thereby having your obsolescence assured when you turned 40. You had t...
Welcome to Mooseport
"Welcome to Mooseport" is the most pleasant and agreeable unfunny comedy I've seen in many a moon. Most unfunny comedies are irritating, distasteful or moronic. Not this one. This one isn't very funny, but it's a nice way to pass 111 minutes nonethel...
Eurotrip
At a high school graduation party, a punk rocker played by Matt Damon sings a song called "Scotty Doesn't Know," about how Scott is unaware that he, the singer, is sleeping with his, Scott's, girlfriend. The joke is that both Scott and the girlfriend...
The Best Two Years
"The Best Two Years" is like "God's Army" without the melodrama. Its characters are Mormon missionaries who are ordinary and therefore relatable. Their stories are commonplace, especially to anyone who has been a missionary, but they are told with in...
Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen
Disney's latest hot commodity, the young actress Lindsay Lohan, got good notices for "The Parent Trap" remake and last year's delightful "Freaky Friday" remake. She's being made to pay her dues, though, with "Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen," an...
The Gospel of John
I'll say this for "The Gospel of John": It's the most literal recreation of the Bible in film history. It is, simply, the Good News translation of the book of John, slapped onto the screen, unembellished and unaltered. The verses that are narration a...
The Seagull’s Laughter (Icelandic)
We gather from "The Seagull's Laughter" that things were a bit different in Iceland in the 1950s from what they are today. When a local girl returns after some years of living in America and reports that her husband dropped dead one day while she was...
50 First Dates
There is a sweet story in "50 First Dates" about a man who falls in love with a woman with no short-term memory, meaning he must re-convince her every day that she is in love with him. In the right hands, this could be a truly unusual romantic film.
...
Miracle
"Miracle" deserves credit for making us feel excitement over something whose outcome we already know. "The Miracle on Ice," in which the U.S.A. hockey team beat the seemingly unstoppable Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Olympics, is considered one of ...
Barbershop 2
The charm of "Barbershop" (2002) was the casual conversation among its characters, the way the dialogue established rapport, brotherhood and community while being funny at the same time. You liked hanging out with the people, even if all they really ...
Catch That Kid
I hesitate to call the main character in "Catch That Kid" pure evil, but she's definitely amoral, and possibly psychopathic. In every situation, she sees the ends as justifying the means, regardless of how much lying or stealing those means require. ...
The Dreamers
Two of Bernardo Bertolucci's great loves -- sex and movies -- are celebrated, analyzed, partaken of and discussed in "The Dreamers," a film that, despite its potentially volatile subject matter, is innocuous and good-natured.
It's a bit of a histo...
Osama (Dari/Pushtu)
In addition to being a fairly well-made motion picture, "Osama" is also valuable as a historical record of what life was like in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
Written, directed, produced and edited with an unflinching eye by Siddiq Barmak, "Osa...
The Return (Russian)
Those viewing Russia as a bleak, disconsolate land will not be persuaded otherwise by "The Return," a bleak, disconsolate film that is nonetheless intriguing and effortlessly watchable.
It was made by Andrey Zvyagintsev, a Russian TV director mak...
Blind Shaft (Chinese)
Amazing how even as the rest of the world grows smaller, China continues to keep itself so separate, so utterly foreign from the rest of the world. "Blind Shaft" depicts a way of life in China that I have no way of verifying but that I have to assume...
The Perfect Score
The major assertion in "The Perfect Score" is that the SAT is not a fair test because it is written by rich white men and therefore skews unfavorably away from women and minorities. I had not heard this argument before, but coming from the characters...
The Big Bounce
When the twisty plots and stylish dialogue of novelist Elmore Leonard are given half-hearted attention, you get the sort of lazy, dull mess that is "The Big Bounce."
Set in beautiful Hawaii, the film stars Owen Wilson as Jack, a petty thief, surfe...
Latter Days
The curse of gay cinema so far has been its mistaken impression that tired, worn-out movie plots will suddenly become interesting if you put gay characters in them. The romantic comedy and romantic drama have most frequently been given this makeover,...
You Got Served
It has been 20 years since the release of "Breakin'" and its sequel, "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo," which came out seven months later. The Law of 20-Year Nostalgia, which dictates that once-popular things should come into vogue again two decades la...
The Butterfly Effect
The theory referenced in the title of "The Butterfly Effect" is the one that says even tiny events can have a profound impact on the course of humanity, like a butterfly flapping its wings in Japan causing Paris Hilton to contract a venereal disease ...
Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!
"Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!" is this year's "Bring It On." Both films take a genre normally expected to suck -- in this case the teen romantic-comedy -- and skew it, cleverly mocking it while indulging in its conventions. I respect a movie that ca...
Touching the Void (documentary)
"Touching the Void" is one of the most extraordinary stories of endurance I have ever seen. If it were a fictional story, I would dismiss it as implausible and preposterous. As a documentary -- which is to say, all of this really happened -- it's ast...
Teacher’s Pet
Though it comes to us from Disney, "Teacher's Pet" bears more resemblance to the frenetic, loose-limbed anarchy of the old Warner Bros. cartoons than to the slick, genteel productions usually associated with the Mouse House. The protagonist is a bras...
Along Came Polly
"Along Came Polly" is much better than it sounds, because it sounds awfully generic. An overly cautious, buttoned-down, germphobic guy meets a carefree, spontaneous, flighty girl! Hilarity ensues!
But the guy is Ben Stiller and the girl is Jennife...
Torque
"Torque" is a guy movie, made by guys, full of guys (and some hot babes), and following a guy's idea of what constitutes a logical progression of events. In the video-game-addled mind of your average guy, it makes perfect sense for every disagreement...
Screaming Men (documentary; Finnish)
In Finland there is evidently a chorus of men who scream national anthems rhythmically and with diction, with counterpoints and solos, just like a regular choir ... um, except they're screaming, not singing.
Why anyone would want to hear this is ...
Dirty Work (documentary)
First-time filmmaker David Sampliner had a great idea for his documentary "Dirty Work," and he executes it admirably, if modestly. What about the yucky jobs, the ones no one would want? Who does them? Do they enjoy them? Is so, WHY?!
And so we mee...
The Best Thief in the World
What makes Izzy, the 12-year-old boy at the cent of "The Best Thief in the World," the best thief in the world is not just that he seldom gets caught. It is also the fact that he hardly steals anything. Oh, the odd candy bar here and there, or a few ...
Employee of the Month
Films with satisfying surprises in their finales operate on the principle that if you were to go back and watch the film again, you'd see the puzzle pieces were there all along and that you simply hadn't assembled them.
A cheaper way to surprise ...
Garden (documentary; Hebrew/Arabic)
The Garden is a seedy area of Tel Aviv, home to prostitutes and drug dealers, professions both held by Nino and Dudu in the documentary "Garden."
Directed by Ruthie Shatz and Adi Barash, the film is notable for its intimacy. Nino and Dudu, both te...
Tiptoes
After "Tiptoes" had its premiere screening at Sundance, director Matthew Bright told the audience the producers threw him off the film as soon as shooting was done, and that while he hasn't seen (and won't see) the finished product, he's certain they...
Trauma
Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connelly appeared in 2000 in a film called "Waking the Dead", about a man who keeps seeing his dead girlfriend, causing him to wonder if he's going insane. That film, while mishandled a little, at least offered some penetrat...
Chasing Liberty
I keep getting Mandy Moore confused with Hilary Duff. Is that normal? Does that automatically disqualify me from reviewing either of their films? I WISH!
Sadly, Mandy Moore is in a new one called "Chasing Liberty," where she plays Anna Foster, dau...
My Baby’s Daddy
"My Baby's Daddy" did not come about because someone had an idea for a story. It came about because someone had an idea for a situation. The difference is vital. A story has an ongoing progression of plot, events, and character development. A situati...
The Home Teachers
Kurt Hale and John E. Moyer are getting better at making films. "The Home Teachers," their second followup to the huge Mormon hit "The Singles Ward," is better focused and less chaotic. The useless and embarrassing celebrity cameos are almost gone, a...
Confessions of a Burning Man (documentary)
Burning Man is an annual week-long bacchanal in the Nevada desert in which thousands of hippies, slackers and other underemployed 20-and-30-something elements of our society gather to share their art, smoke their pot, and set a huge wooden effigy on ...
21 Grams
Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu made waves in 2001 with the marvelous "Amores Perros," which began with a car crash and then showed us the lives of the people involved in it. His first English-language film, "21 Grams," which he has agai...
House of Sand and Fog
Massoud Amir Behrani, the proud, honest Iranian immigrant played by Ben Kingsley in "House of Sand and Fog," is the sort of person the American Dream was designed for. As a colonel in pre-Ayatollah Iran, he once had several large trees torn down beca...
The Company
In choosing whether to watch Robert Altman's "The Company," it is imperative that viewers consider one thing: Do you love ballet?
Those who answer "no" must avoid the film at all costs, for the bulk of its scenes consist of ballet performances and...
