Movie Reviews
Masked and Anonymous
One of the more glorious trainwrecks of Sundance 2003 was "Masked and Anonymous," a nearly incomprehensible vanity piece starring Bob Dylan and about a million other celebrities who apparently really, really wanted to be in a film with Bob Dylan, eve...
Seabiscuit
"Seabiscuit" must be the long-awaited summertime version of an Oscar hopeful. It has the fine performances and dramatic heft of a late-fall picture, but drops the self-importance and plays up the feel-goodness the way the best summer crowd-pleasers d...
Camp
It's the start of Camp Ovation, an upstate New York summer camp for theater students. A mousy girl approaches the prima donna and says hello.
"Is this your first year at Camp Ovation?" the prima donna asks haughtily.
"No," is the reply. "I was ...
Buffalo Soldiers
As we are told in "Buffalo Soldiers," war is hell, but peace is BORING. And boredom, as you know, leads to mischief.
There is mischief aplenty in "Buffalo Soldiers," a film that begins as a cynically funny dark comedy but soon falls victim to a gl...
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
The first "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" film, you'll recall, was a dull, tedious affair. It was set up like a video game, to its detriment: heroine faces conflict, heroine defeats enemy, heroine moves onto next conflict. No suspense, no climax, no fun.
...
Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
I get a headache just THINKING about "Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over." Fortunately, there's so little about it I remember that thinking about it doesn't take very long.
In the third installment of this once-clever series, everyone's a cameo except for Ju...
Mondays in the Sun (Spanish)
As fate would have it, I was able to spend a lot of time watching and contemplating "Mondays in the Sun" -- the story of unemployed shipyard workers -- because I was unemployed myself.
Since I was currently traveling the road of the characters --...
Balseros (Spanish; documentary)
Most Americans probably remember the summer of 1994 and the stories of Cuba's mass exodus of people trying to raft, sail or swim their way to Florida. "Balseros" follows seven of them on their perilous journey, then follows up five years later to see...
Bad Boys II
In this summer of sequels, I suspect none will be as distasteful and off-putting as "Bad Boys II," an utterly crass, clueless exercise in noise just for noise's sake.
Those who felt "Bad Boys" (1995) was mediocre at best may be disappointed to lea...
How to Deal
Since it is against the law to make a teen-girl drama without having the teen-girl protagonist act as narrator, "How to Deal" has Halley Martin (Mandy Moore) act as its narrator. She says a lot of wise things at the beginning of the movie. Among them...
Dirty Pretty Things
"Dirty Pretty Things" is about the dirty things you sometimes have to do to make life pretty. It is set in London, which is just about perfect. This is a city with a lot of spectacular sights, known for its art and beauty, but which everyone knows ha...
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
"The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" begins with a squad of British police officers in 1899 being brought into a severe state of befuddlement when a tank full of Germans shows up and rams into a bank building. This is alarming not because they are...
Northfork
I worry about the Polish Brothers, Michael and Mark. They came on the scene in 1999 with their indie hit "Twin Falls Idaho," in which they played conjoined twins who both fall in love with the same prostitute. That film, like all great films, told a ...
The Cuckoo (Russian/Finnish/Sami)
"The Cuckoo" is told in three languages, and I don't speak any of them. The film has subtitles, fortunately, making me luckier than the three characters in it, who don't understand each other but keep talking anyway.
This light, mildly absurd come...
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
One doesn't hold out much hope for a movie based on a Disney theme-park attraction, especially if one endured last year's "Country Bears." But "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" exceeds expectations and breaks a curse of its own...
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
A lot of things get wrecked in "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," but in the process, something is rebuilt: Arnold Schwarzenegger's career.
"Terminator 2: Judgment Day" (1991) was the last profitable Schwarzenegger film. The subsequent string o...
Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
I am always amazed at how sequels can betray the visions of their predecessors, even when the first films had little vision to begin with. Here is what I said about "Legally Blonde" upon its release in 2001:
"Some movies do what others have done b...
On_Line
There is nothing special about "On_Line." It thinks it is new and exciting because it features the Internet in a starring role, but it's really the same old "people are lonely" whining, only with new technology.
Taking place in January 2002 (yet ...
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle
I am pretty sure everything that happens in "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" is impossible. The characters exist in a world where the gravity is enforced haphazardly at best, and where the laws of physics in general are treated with outrageous disre...
28 Days Later
In the intense opening sequence that begins "28 Days Later" and sets the tone for the rest of the film, animal-rights activists break into a London laboratory and set the test monkeys free, ignoring panicked objections from scientists who say the pri...
The Hulk
Ostensibly, "Hulk" is about science gone amok and about the various things parents do to screw up their children. In practical terms, though, it is about an enormous green man smashing things.
He does it with awesome precision and a brutishness th...
From Justin to Kelly
You see everything Hollywood produces, you see a lot of bad movies. Hollywood produces bad movies the way plants produce oxygen. But with most bad movies, you can tell they at least sounded like good ideas at one point, perhaps very early on, and wer...
Alex & Emma
The first dumb thing Emma says in "Alex & Emma" is when she explains why she always reads the last page of a book before committing to the entire thing: "If I like the ending, I know I'll like getting to it."
Bullcrap. The endings of romantic ...
Manito
Eric Eason's "Manito" is so vividly written and filmed that you can practically smell the mean streets it takes place on. More than telling us about specific characters, it tells us about a group of people: proud Hispanics in the Washington Heights n...
Hollywood Homicide
If there were a TV show called "Hollywood Homicide," the movie of that name that opens Friday could be a passable episode of it. As a series, it wouldn't matter that some characters exist without being given much to do; after all, not everyone can be...
Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd
"Dumb and Dumber" was about dumb characters, but it was clearly made by smart people. Its prequel, "Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd," is about dumb characters, too, but this time apparently made by people who weren't very smart themselves. Th...
The Hard Word
"The Hard Word" has a hard time committing to anything. It is, more than anything else, a heist film in which a team of criminals works to pull off a major theft, double-crossing each other all the while. Except the double-crosses are almost negligib...
Jet Lag (French)
Rose, the protagonist played by Juliette Binoche in "Jet Lag," begins the film by saying she wishes her life were like an American movie. She's thinking of "Roman Holiday" specifically, but she means fluffy, happy-ending American romances in general....
May
"May" is an astonishingly distasteful movie, yet an altogether enjoyable one, if that's your thing. It is the sort of blood-soaked flick that straddles the line between humor and horror well enough to be a cult classic -- which is a good thing, becau...
2 Fast 2 Furious
2001's surprise summer hit "The Fast and the Furious" was, as I said at the time, "a loud, pointless movie, but it performs its loud pointlessness pretty well." It was packed with hot cars, fast races, gorgeous women and barrels of male bravado.
...
Whale Rider
The first chief of a particular Maori tribe, so the legend goes, arrived on the back of a whale, and all subsequent chiefs have been his descendants. "Whale Rider" tells the story of what happens when the current chief's heir in this patriarchal soci...
The Eye (Cantonese)
From Hong Kong comes "The Eye," a supernatural thriller that has already caught the eye of Tom Cruise, who bought the rights to remake it in English.
As a Hollywood product, however, I suspect it will look even more like "The Sixth Sense" than it ...
Finding Nemo
About the only thing the Walt Disney Company can do reliably anymore is let its Pixar division do its thing.
Left to their own devices, the whizzes at Pixar produce a computer-animated film every couple years that is as funny, clever and charming ...
Capturing the Friedmans (documentary)
Andrew Jarecki's "Capturing the Friedmans" exhibits a far better skill for storytelling than most documentaries do, masterfully weaving all the facts into the picture one by one until a complete, harrowing image has emerged. It is more intriguing tha...
Soldier’s Girl
"It may seem bizarre, maybe even sensational," says our narrator in "Soldier's Girl." Up front, she tells us her story is a tragedy. We know, then, that passion will be involved. For in real life -- and this is based on a true story -- it is passion,...
The Italian Job
Like most movies, "The Italian Job" is about an aging criminal who plans One Last Job before retirement, a very difficult job that will make him ridiculously wealthy. And, like 75 percent of all films ever made, it features a normal, handsome man lea...
Wrong Turn
The characters in "Wrong Turn" acknowledge the superficial resemblance between their plight and that of the characters in "Deliverance," but they remain silent on the much richer similarities to films like "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "The Hills Have E...
Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns (documentary)
I first heard They Might Be Giants on the Dr. Demento radio show in about 1990, right around the time of the duo's seminal "Flood" album. Delighted by their catchy pop sound and offbeat lyrics, I sought out a TMBG album at the local alternative recor...
Bruce Almighty
One of the things the title character learns in "Bruce Almighty" is voiced by God himself: "You have a gift for bringing joy and laughter to the world," he says, in the folksy voice of Morgan Freeman. With any luck, Jim Carrey, who plays Bruce, has l...
The In-Laws
I hope Albert Brooks is happy knowing that when he appears in mediocre films like "The In-Laws," he is coming off as the brightest spot in them. Of course, he shines in good movies, too, but the light is even more radiant when all that surrounds him ...
Down with Love
"Down with Love" is essentially just one long joke, but it's such a sunny, good-natured one that only with great grumpy effort, I suspect, could one succeed in not enjoying it.
It is shot in the style of the Rock Hudson/Doris Day romantic comedies...
The Sea (Icelandic)
Imagine TV's "Dallas" transplanted to an Icelandic fishing village and you have "The Sea," a well-wrought family melodrama about greed, selfishness and seafood.
Thordur (Gunnar Eyjolfsson) is the aging, hobbled, avuncular head of a major fishing b...
The Matrix Reloaded
The plot thickens in "The Matrix Reloaded," while the dialogue gets heavier and the special effects get more expensive. It is no better than its groundbreaking predecessor -- its cyclical structure of leaden philosophical conversation followed by tec...
Daddy Day Care
As a PG-rated family comedy, "Daddy Day Care" is required by law to include jokes about flatulence, pee-pee and poo-poo. If the filmmakers did not include at least one fart joke, the Federal Communications Commission would not allow the film to be re...
The Shape of Things
Neil LaBute's first two films, "In the Company of Men" (1997) and "Your Friends & Neighbors" (1998), focused on selfish, cruel characters capable of committing unspeakable acts of social inhumanity. After sidetracking with "Nurse Betty" (2000) an...
A Mighty Wind
In "A Mighty Wind," Christopher Guest experiments with the genre he practically invented, the improvised faux-documentary comedy.
Where "Waiting for Guffman" (1996) and "Best in Show" (2000) held its characters as subjects of ruthless derision, "...
The Man on the Train (French)
"The Man on the Train" is about the lives we didn't live, the paths we didn't follow. It suggests that wherever we are in life, we tend to wonder if things wouldn't be better if we were somewhere else.
And so there's a bit of melancholy and longi...
Owning Mahowny
Philip Seymour Hoffman is a fine actor, no question, but his greatest strength is in choosing roles. He plays losers best, he knows it, and he embraces it. Even his characters who manage to succeed in their worlds, like the screenwriter in "State and...
Blue Car
A blue car is what Meg's father was driving when he left the family in Karen Moncrieff's "Blue Car," a moody, almost somnolent film in which good performances outweigh the oppressive subject matter.
Meg (Agnes Brucker) is a high school student wi...
The Lizzie McGuire Movie
Amanda Bynes, star of Nickelodeon's "The Amanda Show," got her big starring vehicle a few weeks ago with "What a Girl Wants." Now her Disney Channel counterpart, Hilary Duff, gets her own TV-to-film adaptation, "The Lizzie McGuire Movie," based on th...
X2: X-Men United
"X2: X-Men United" is such an entertaining, action-packed film that you almost forget it's about tolerance and political activism. Maybe "Malcolm X" would have been more interesting if it had had a few mutants in it.
"X-Men" (2000) was fine, but w...
The Dancer Upstairs
Love is not only blind, but blinding. Those caught within its grip often cannot think objectively or function normally. This is dangerous in normal circumstances, but imagine how much more troublesome love would be if you were a cop hunting down a ru...
Manic
One of the best films to come from the 2001 Sundance Film Festival was "Manic," a digital-video drama that was relegated to the second-class "American Spectrum" category and elicited no buzz before its premiere. At Sundance, just like in the regular ...
Better Luck Tomorrow
It is perversely fascinating to see a film about what those super-smart Asian kids in high school were REALLY like. "Better Luck Tomorrow" is satisfying in that way, but even without that curiosity factor, it is a wonderful, darkly funny look at weal...
Identity
The identity of "Identity" remains a secret for most of the film's running time. Mystery? Psychological thriller? Slasher film? None of the above? The film cleverly keeps its audience off-balance without violating its own rules or using cheap tactics...
It Runs in the Family
It was brave of Kirk Douglas, his speech impaired by a 1995 stroke, to continue acting. I just wish he would choose better projects than "It Runs in the Family," a well-meaning but mediocre movie that in no way bolsters his considerable filmography.
...
People I Know
Aside from a characteristically fine performance by Al Pacino, the misshapen "People I Know" is not especially worth knowing. In fact, it barely seems to know itself.
Pacino plays Eli Wurman, an aging New York publicist with a dwindling client lis...
Confidence
To pull off a good con, you gotta have a patsy, a chump, a sucker. Fortunately, movie audiences are full of 'em, and movies about con artists nearly always do well.
In the style (perhaps too much so) of con movies like "The Grifters," "The Sting,"...
The Real Cancun
"The Real Cancun" successfully pulls out the entertaining aspects of MTV's "Real World" program and leaves behind the less-appealing elements, like the face-the-camera confessionals and the casting of opposites who are bound to hate each other so we ...
Holes
"Holes" was made by adults who know the best kids' movies are the ones that don't talk down to kids. They assume children are smart, which they are, and that they can follow fairly complicated plots, which they can. Kids' movies, on the whole, should...
Malibu’s Most Wanted
Little else about "Malibu's Most Wanted" is interesting, so let's talk about its role as a social indicator. It will help us pass the time before we have to get down to actually reviewing the film, which we're not really looking forward to.
Every ...
Winged Migration (documentary)
The actors in "Winged Migration" strut across the frame like natural-born stars, aware of but ignoring the presence of cameramen and directors. They have personality and vitality. Oh, and they can fly.
Not since Hitchcock's "The Birds" have our fr...
Bulletproof Monk
Like most films about people who know martial arts, "Bulletproof Monk" has a prologue set in Tibet, 1943, where someone is killed and a priceless treasure is stolen. In this case, it is an elderly monk who takes one for the team -- a fact which cause...
Ghosts of the Abyss
In "Ghosts of the Abyss," director James Cameron continues his obsession with the sea that began with "The Abyss" (1989) and reached its zenith with "Titanic" (1997). (Technically, you could count "Piranha II: The Spawning," his 1981 feature-film deb...
XX/XY
"XX/XY" features some of the least interesting characters in the world, complaining about their problems in a way that makes you stop wondering why people think Gen Xers do nothing but whine. It's a go-nowhere, do-nothing movie.
It begins in 1993...
Anger Management
Adam Sandler's onscreen persona has frequently been that of the angry moron, the simple-minded doof prone to fits of violence. "Anger Management" slyly twists that character, casting Sandler as an indecisive businessman whose problem is that he doesn...
House of 1000 Corpses
"House of 1000 Corpses" is a massively unpleasant film, full of ceaseless vulgarity and horrific images. I have seen movies with more gore and carnage -- sorry, Rob Zombie, you have failed to break any records there -- but I don't know that I've seen...
Phone Booth
Maintaining his reputation as one of Hollywood's most inconsistent directors, Joel Schumacher bounces back from last year's "Bad Company" debacle with the excellent "Phone Booth," a tight, suspenseful little drama whose moralistic streak is downplaye...
What a Girl Wants
"What a Girl Wants" has a man and a woman from two different worlds at odds with each other, even though there is great love between them. Eventually, their differences get the best of them and they split up, at which point we see scenes of them miss...
Levity
There is probably a good film in "Levity," but it's hidden beneath layers of heavy-handed dramatizing and a large roster of tortured-soul characters.
Written and directed by Ed Solomon (who scripted "Men in Black" and "Bill & Ted's Excellent ...
DysFunKtional Family
I had long hoped that someone would make a film pointing out the humorous difference between white people and black people, and now Eddie Griffin's "DysFunKtional Family" has done it!!!!!!!!!!
Comedy in film is subjective -- what make me laugh mig...
A Man Apart
I like Vin Diesel. Heaven help me, I like Vin Diesel. There's something in his film persona that I find very entertaining. I can't explain it, really. It's like asking why chocolate tastes good: It tastes good because, well, it tastes good.
"A Man...
The Man Without a Past (Finnish)
From watching European films, one would get the impression it is an easy thing to wander off a train in a strange town, find someplace to live, get a job and a girlfriend, all while experiencing amnesia. If these exact things haven't happened in film...
Spellbound (documentary)
The Oscar-nominated "Spellbound" owes its title to its subject, which is the 1999 national spelling bee. It is also an apt description of an audience watching the film, however: rapt, enthralled, enjoying every minute. I almost hate to tell you it's ...
The Good Thief
One of the highest compliments you can pay a film is to say that you truly want to know what's going to happen to the characters.
This was the case with me and "The Good Thief," Neil Jordan's noirish heist movie starring Nick Nolte as an aging, d...
Head of State
The trouble with the films prior to "Head of State" that have had Chris Rock in major roles is that they have not used the comedian's considerable talents properly.
In his stage shows, his young face serves as a stark contrast to his intelligent,...
The Core
In the spirit of "Armageddon" and all the loud, dumb disaster flicks before it comes "The Core," in which scientists bore through rock and magma to reach the center of the planet, start the core spinning again, and save the world. You would think suc...
Basic
There's a game you see sometimes at improv comedy shows called, depending on the troupe doing it, "Faster Faster" or "Half Life." In it, the actors improvise a scene one minute in length, then re-do the scene in 30 seconds, then again in 15, then in ...
Raising Victor Vargas
"Raising Victor Vargas" is one of the most deliciously authentic films I've ever seen. It's set in the Lower East Side of Manhattan during a hot summer, and you can practical smell, taste and feel it: The kids are out of school, the families live in ...
Dreamcatcher
Even if Stephen King hadn't written an episode of "The X-Files," we'd know he was a fan by reading "Dreamcatcher," his 2001 novel that demonstrates the truth is out there, and it is yucky.
The story has mind-reading, fast-moving viruses, governmen...
View from the Top
"View from the Top" stinks like it was made by rank amateurs, and particularly incompetent ones, at that. And yet it stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Mark Ruffalo, Mike Myers, Candice Bergen, Rob Lowe and Christina Applegate, all of whom can get better work if...
Boat Trip
In an early scene in "Boat Trip," a man gives his boyfriend a peck on the cheek. Behind me, a young man in the theater said, "Sick!" I thought: Why would you go to a movie about two straight men who get stuck on a gay cruise if even a simple peck on ...
Agent Cody Banks
What kid hasn't dreamed of being a super-cool secret agent? The excitment, the adventure, the gadgets -- someone should make a movie about spy kids!
Unfortunately for "Agent Cody Banks," someone already made a movie about spy kids, and it was call...
The Hunted
There is a lot of stabbing in "The Hunted." I think it may be the stabbingest movie I've ever seen. If the film were called "Stabby McStabberton, the Guy Who Stabs People," I doubt it would have any more stabbing than it already does.
But I am bei...
Willard
The first line of dialogue in "Willard" is spoken by the title character's gnarled old mother, shouting from her bedroom: "Willard, there are rats in the basement!"
And indeed there are. The Stiles family's old Brooklyn manor is home to a few rats...
Spun
If "Spun" has a point -- and I am not entirely certain it does -- it is that doing meth totally screws you up. I don't dispute this, and it's a point worth making. The trouble is, "Spun" seems more intent on giving us a day-in-the-life presentation o...
Bend It Like Beckham
"Bend It Like Beckham" is the latest film to explore the comedic potential of people from India, not as Kwik-E-Mart employees or cab drivers, but as actual people with an actual culture. Of course, even these more respectful films wouldn't exist if t...
Bringing Down the House
There's a cluelessness about "Bringing Down the House" that is very unappealing. The premise that drives most of the action in the film is that if the uptight white lawyer's neighbors and business associates find out he's friends with a black woman, ...
Tears of the Sun
"Tears of the Sun" is only disappointing if you have the unreasonable expectation of movies being original. If you have accepted that there are few new stories in Hollywood, or even old stories being told in new ways, then you have accepted the medio...
Irreversible (French)
Gaspar Noé, France's Argentine-born auteur provocateur, shoots himself in the foot with "Irreversible," a film whose pluses will be outweighed in many viewers' minds by the distasteful minuses.
There is much to admire, especially from a structura...
Cradle 2 the Grave
I don't know why directors even bother including Jet Li's reaction shots in movies. Regardless of what other people in the scene have said or done, Li's face will have the same expression: stony indifference, followed by reluctant butt-kicking. He is...
Poolhall Junkies
"Poolhall Junkies" is populated by professional hustlers who are consistently too dumb to know when they're being hustled. I would think accomplished con men would know a con when they see one, but evidently not.
The film was directed by its star,...
The Life of David Gale
If your movie has a surprise twist in it, you should not trumpet that fact loudly in your advertising, the way Universal has done with "The Life of David Gale." It acts as a challenge to the audience, practically daring them to spot the twist before ...
Dark Blue
"Dark Blue" is set in the days before the Rodney King riots of 1992, when Los Angeles was on pins and needles, basically planning to riot if the verdict came back not guilty.
It was a tense time, and "Dark Blue" hypothesizes ways of making it eve...
Gods and Generals
Ronald F. Maxwell is apparently a big fan of the Civil War. Good for him, I say. Everyone needs a hobby, and while I personally don't understand the pleasure to be gained in analyzing and reliving a horrific war that took place 150 years ago, far be ...
Till Human Voices Wake Us
"Till Human Voices Wake Us" is a line from T.S. Eliot's poem "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock," a poem I had to write a term paper on in high school and which I still remember very well. It is more interesting than this movie, which is as ponderou...
Old School
"Old School" is, in fact, an old-school film in the spirit of "Porky's," with "Saturday Night Live" alum Will Ferrell filling the John Belushi role of chief mischief-maker and beer-imbiber.
There is little other point to the film than what is impl...
Daredevil
He's a brooding superhero who only comes out at night, stubbornly fighting to avenge the years-ago death of his father. He has no super-strength; instead, he has nifty gadgets and acrobatic prowess, gamboling about the rooftops of a major metropolis ...
The Jungle Book 2
Say what you will about the Disney company -- that they have no respect for their own masterpieces, that they'll do anything for a buck, that they make Walt's corpse spin in its grave on almost a weekly basis -- but one thing's for sure: They know a ...
All the Real Girls
"All the Real Girls" is a tender story of young love, set against the unlikely backdrop of a blue-collar Southern town.
The town is the sort of place where men work in factories during the week and on their cars on the weekends. They drink beer, ...
