Movie Reviews
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Filmmaking brothers Joel and Ethan Coen live in an interesting little world. It's a world where everyone, even the one-line characters, has a distinctive face and an unmistakably Coen method of deadpan delivery. It's a world where dialogue that is un...
Cast Away
Something we've long suspected turns out to be true: You really COULD put Tom Hanks on a desert island, film it, and wind up with an entertaining movie. He's JUST THAT GOOD.
I'm being facetious, but the fact is, 60 of "Cast Away's" 140 minutes fe...
Chocolat
Director Lasse Hallstrom's last project, "The Cider House Rules," was so desperately overrated that it's good to see his latest film, "Chocolat," turn out so light and frothy there's no way it can suffer the same fate. It will be more or less enjoyed...
Miss Congeniality
This movie has William Shatner. In a perfect world, that would be enough of a review right there, and we could go home.
Alas, the world is not yet perfect, as evidenced by the continued proliferation of limp, muddled comedies like "Miss Congenial...
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Chinese)
Director Ang Lee could have had himself a nice little chick flick with "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." It has an appealing love story, some heartfelt sentiment, and lush cinematography. Women are heroes. Even the villain is a woman. It's a woman's ...
Dracula 2000
The official title of this thing is "Wes Craven Presents Dracula 2000," a bit of gimmickry designed to fool us into thinking the man who directed "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and the "Scream" movies was responsible for this one, too. Surely the combin...
The Emperor’s New Groove
Disney's new ultra-hip cartoon "The Emperor's New Groove" is clearly the product of a world-weary, post-Nickelodeon era. It's not enough anymore to make the kids laugh while slipping in some satire for the grown-ups; kids are so savvy nowadays, you h...
What Women Want
Men and women are very different, and each gender often doesn't know what the other is thinking! That's the earth-shattering message expressed so cutely in "What Women Want," a soft romantic comedy focusing on a man, but made for women.
Directed ...
Dude, Where’s My Car?
"Dude, Where's My Car?" is a triumph in filmmaking, a masterful blend of brilliant characterization, engaging storytelling, and pure human emotion.
Never have I seen such a penetrating examination of the intricate and fragile creation that is huma...
Pollock
The trouble with biopics is that people's lives don't often have "plots" in the conventional sense of the word. Where stories have beginnings, middles and ends, real life has a beginning and an ending, but there's no guarantee anything in between wil...
Dungeons & Dragons
Ironically, while Dungeons & Dragons was an inventive role-playing game that many subsequent games ripped off, the movie "Dungeons & Dragons" is a huge rip-off of "Star Wars," "Star Trek," "The Hobbit," "Harry Potter" and countless other sour...
Proof of Life
Russell Crowe gained notoriety for his nuanced turn in last year's "The Insider," then got the accompanying popular vote as an action star -- something no one thought he would ever be -- in this year's "Gladiator." His latest, "Proof of Life," shows ...
Vertical Limit
In a film chock-full of events that range from the unlikely to the physically impossible, probably the most unbelievable moment in "Vertical Limit" is when the main guy and the sort-of main girl kiss. By itself, it doesn't mean much. But it goes a lo...
Quills
Geoffrey Rush gives a brilliant performance as the Marquis de Sade, the famed pornographer for whom the term "sadism" was coined, in Philip Kaufman's "Quills." He's portrayed as a tortured (literally) genius whose drive to keep writing is almost as s...
Unbreakable
M. Night Shyamalan, writer and director of "The Sixth Sense," has followed up that breakthrough film with one that is a mere shadow of it in some ways, but a little better than it in others.
"Unbreakable" is a darkly exhilarating story about David...
102 Dalmatians
One thing is certain about "102 Dalmatians," the live-action sequel to the 1996 live-action version of the Disney classic: They didn't do it because they had a great idea for a story.
How do I know that? Because the story in the sequel is exactly ...
Bounce
The interesting behind-the-scenes story about "Bounce" -- in which a man falls in love with the widow whose husband died in a plane crash that he, the suitor, was supposed to be in, too -- is that stars Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Affleck are a real-life...
Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Who would have thought Ron Howard -- director of such soft-centered, mushy fare as "Cocoon" and "Parenthood" -- could come up with something as imaginative and charming as the new live-action adapatation of Dr. Seuss' "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"...
Rugrats in Paris: The Movie
Those cute little rugrats called "The Rugrats" are back in a second big-screen adventure that is better than the first, with potty jokes for the kids and parodies of "The Godfather" and other films for the grownups.
Stu Pickles (voice of Jack Rile...
The 6th Day
Perhaps the makers of "The 6th Day" realized that the fading Arnold Schwarzenegger now has about half the box-office strength he once did, and shrewdly thought to shore themselves up against that liability by putting TWO Arnold Schwarzeneggers in the...
You Can Count on Me
Sundance audiences loved writer/director Ken Lonergan's "You Can Count on Me," and it's easy to see why. Few films have ever captured quite so accurately the love-hate relationship between siblings.
What could be stranger than a family? People who...
One Day in September (documentary)
"One Day in September" is the slickly told story of the 1972 Munich Olympics, in which Palestinian terrorists took hostage and eventually killed a dozen Israeli athletes.
Director Kevin Macdonald's greatest achievement in the documentary is getti...
What’s Cooking?
The most riveting scene in "What's Cooking?" comes halfway through it, when we are treated to a baking montage.
Criss-crossing through the four different scenes that have already been established, we see the hands of the main characters as they p...
Little Nicky
In reviewing "Little Nicky," it would be too easy to say that Adam Sandler playing the son of Satan is a matter of type-casting, or that while Adam Sandler may be the devil, it's the audience who is in hell, or that if Adam Sandler was not doomed to ...
Men of Honor
"Men of Honor" tries to be a lot of things -- inspiring against-all-odds story, poignant human drama, exciting macho adventure -- but the thing it succeeds most at is being a second-rate melodrama.
Oh, the scenes between would-be Navy diver Carl B...
Red Planet
Why must going to Mars always be such a dreary prospect?
Earlier this year, we had "Mission to Mars," which was slow and miserable, not to mention full of itself. Now there's "Red Planet," a film that is at least as bad (albeit in a different way)...
Charlie’s Angels
Pay attention to the woman in the long, flowing robes who serves as an icon for Columbia Pictures, shown just before "Charlie's Angels" starts. It's the last image of female dignity you'll see for another hour and a half.
"Charlie's Angels" does w...
The Legend of Bagger Vance
"The Legend of Bagger Vance" is an eminently likable film, full of eminently likable stars playing eminently likable characters. It seems to have delusions of being a deep, meaningful piece of work, but if you disregard that false notion, there's not...
Lucky Numbers
Who would have thought Nora Ephron -- director of "Sleepless in Seattle" and "You've Got Mail" -- could handle a dark comedy about murder and graft? Well, she can't, actually, but "Lucky Numbers" is not an altogether bad stab at it.
John Travolta ...
The Broken Hearts Club
What's it like to be a 20-something gay man in Los Angeles? At least first-time director/writer Greg Berlanti picked a locale for his niche film in which there is a significant-sized niche to appreciate it. If it were about trendy young homosexuals i...
A Room for Romeo Brass
Despite being anti-climactic and a little unsatisfying, "A Room for Romeo Brass" nonetheless charms and entertains with its lovable characters and occasional bursts of unforeseen suspense.
This is a comedy, by and large, about two British teens. ...
The Yards
When a film has as oppressively drab a tone to it as "The Yards" does, it's hard to have much hope when a character says, in the first scene, "From now on, we're going to have nothing but good times."
That character is Val Handler (Ellen Burstyn)...
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
Of all the misbegotten, asinine movie sequels Hollywood has ever cooked up, "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2" might be the worst. Not only is it an illogical, nastily violent affair full of stock characters and slasher-movie tactics, but it's a sequel...
The Little Vampire
The slightly twisted Halloween movie "The Little Vampire," based on a series of children's books, is a surprisingly enjoyable film that its young target audience will love, while their parents will find it quite tolerable indeed.
Tony Thompson (Jo...
Pay it Forward
The end of "Pay it Forward" will make you cry. This is the movie's primary goal; it even leaves some things underdeveloped throughout the film in its haste to make sure the hankies come out in the last five minutes. How you'll feel about the crying a...
The Legend of Drunken Master
"The Legend of Drunken Master" is not one of the Hollywood Jackie Chan movies, where Chan is teamed up with a zany sidekick. It's a mid-'90s Chinese film dubbed into English where Chan is teamed up with a bunch of guys whose butts need kickin'.
A...
Bedazzled
The problem with "Bedazzled" is that even if you accept its age-old premise -- guy makes deal with the devil but is tricked out of getting what he wants -- there's still too much other stupid stuff to get in the way of ever really enjoying the thing....
Beautiful
Sally Field's directorial debut, entitled "Beautiful," is anything but. It's an amateurishly written, miscasted, wrong-headed slab of drudgery that punishes all who choose to watch it.
We begin in 1986 in Naperville, Ill. Twelve-year-old Mona Hib...
Dr. T and the Women
"Dr. T and the Women" takes the viewer through several emotions. First you wait patiently, perhaps smilingly, as things start to get underway and the general tone is one of humor and whimsy. Then you get bored when you realize you're well into the fi...
Lost Souls
"Lost Souls" was supposed to have been released last year. New Line Cinema held it, however, saying they didn't want it to get confused with "Stigmata," which came out around that time and which also deals with demonic possession and the Catholic chu...
Best in Show
"Best in Show," Christopher Guest's documentary-style peek into the world of dog shows, is a worthy follow-up to the brilliant "Waiting for Guffman," but it lacks the deeper points that made the earlier film work so well.
That said, it should als...
The Exorcist: The Version You’ve Never Seen
"The Exorcist" is certainly one of the scariest movies ever made, though it's perhaps one of the most overrated, too. People tend to forget the boring Middle-Eastern opening sequence that has little bearing on the rest of the film, and remember only ...
The Ladies Man
Obviously, the folks at "Saturday Night Live" have given up on the idea of making another really good movie based on characters from the show. They know now that even if they just use moderately popular characters -- like "The Ladies Man," for exampl...
The Contender
One of the marks of a truly great film is if it can draw you in so thoroughly that you begin to think what it thinks and believe in the world it creates. (This is also one of the marks of effective propaganda; I guess there's a fine line.) "The Conte...
Billy Elliot
In the sweetly inspiring British film "Billy Elliot," the title character (played endearingly by Jamie Bell) is a normal 11-year-old lad with one peculiarity: He wants to be a ballet dancer.
Not so odd, maybe, except that he lives in a North East...
Requiem for a Dream
Darren Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream," a haunting and beautiful story of loneliness and desperation, is the most powerfully disturbing movie of the year, possibly of the last several years.
Many critics have already correctly observed that the...
Digimon: The Movie
Apparently "Digimon" premiered in Japan before "Pokemon" did, making it the originator, not the ripoff. Which may explain why it's better than "Pokemon." Problem is, that's not saying much, and frankly, "Digimon" isn't deserving of much, as it's stil...
Meet the Parents
"Meet the Parents" would be nothing without Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller. The script is funny, and the supporting cast does its job -- it supports, no more, no less -- but it's De Niro and Stiller who make it the unceasingly entertaining treat that...
Get Carter
I haven't seen the original 1971 "Get Carter," which starred Michael Caine, but I have to believe it was better than the damp new version starring a surprisingly inarticulate (even for him) Sylvester Stallone.
Set in a version of Seattle in which ...
Two Family House
I hope it doesn't make me a racist or anything to admit that I love films about loud, argumentative Italians (especially if they live in New York), and that I've always found lilting Irish accents amusing. Put all those elements into one warm-hearted...
Dancer in the Dark
Danish director Lars von Trier attracted attention in 1995 when he began the "Dogme" movement of filmmaking, in which directors eschew special effects, camera tricks, musical scores and expensive film stock to create a more natural, back-to-basics mo...
Remember the Titans
"Remember the Titans" is a cheerfully uplifting triumph, that rare film that conveys emotion without sentimentality, and whose weaknesses are so overpowered by its strengths that you practically forget they exist.
Based on a true story, the film i...
Girlfight
Karyn Kusama's first feature film, "Girlfight," is an impressive debut, an enthralling story about an urban teen finding her place in life. And that place happens to be a boxing ring.
Diana Guzman (Michelle Rodriguez) lives with her milquetoast b...
Almost Famous
Say whatever you want about "Jerry Maguire," the last film directed by Cameron Crowe before his new "Almost Famous." As far as I'm concerned, it's "Say Anything" -- that brilliantly funny, poignant and important "teen film" (though it defied that gen...
Urban Legends: Final Cut
The 1998 slasher film "Urban Legend" was based on the admittedly very cool premise of a serial killer who murders people based on common urban myths -- stories that supposedly happened to "a friend of a friend," but that never actually occurred anywh...
Woman on Top
Ordinarily, you'd expect a movie whose opening narration declares it a story about "love, motion sickness, and the art of cooking" to be either really bad or really good. "Woman on Top" is actually neither, though its poor writing, flat acting and ge...
Duets
"Duets" is a film about karaoke singing, but as the title suggests, it's also about relationships -- how people connect with each other and how they affect each other.
It is bitterly ironic, then, that the "relationship" part of "Duets" is the wo...
Bait
The result of trying to mix two genres of film is often that you fail at both of them. "Bait" is a prime example of this, a film that could have been either a decent paranoia-action thriller, or an entertaining comedy about an ex-con being used unwil...
Urbania
"Urbania" comes equipped with a great tagline -- "Hear any good stories lately?" -- and a curiously quasi-kitschy format in which urban legends are enacted as secondary stories.
It's a noirish murder mystery, sort of, in which gay New Yorker Char...
Nurse Betty
Neil LaBute's screwy comedy "Nurse Betty" is a daffy trip through the comical world of post-traumatic stress disorder and unhealthy obsessions, with some surprising depth to it. It's also very funny, though not nearly as much or as often as you'd hop...
The Watcher
"The Watcher" is a passable, reasonably good serial-killer movie. It has a few clever ideas and some suspenseful moments. There's really not too much wrong with it.
No, wait. Make all those statements conditional: It WOULD BE passable, it WOULD H...
The Way of the Gun
The first scene in "The Way of the Gun" has our two "heroes," Parker (Ryan Phillippe) and Longbaugh (Benicio Del Toro), outside a nightclub, nonchalantly sitting on a guy's car and setting the alarm off. When the guy, accompanied by his foul-mouthed ...
Highlander: Endgame
In the "Highlander" movies and TV series, they're fond of saying, "In the end, there can be only one." Too bad that policy doesn't apply to "Highlander" movies.
In this fourth and allegedly final entry, the Scottish immortal from the films, Conno...
Whipped
The most interesting thing about "Whipped" is that it was originally rated NC-17, not for sex or nudity, but for language.
Now, understand: You don't get an NC-17 rating just because you say the F-word a lot. It comes up a lot in this movie, but ...
The Crew
"The Crew," about a quartet of retired New Jersey mobsters now running out the clock in Miami, would make a pleasant sitcom, perhaps on CBS on Saturday nights, when shows geared toward old people have traditionally been successful.
(Telling detai...
Bring It On
A film that is as funny to teen-agers as it is to fun-loving adults shouldn't be such a rarity -- after all, everyone likes to laugh -- but a rarity it is, largely because teen films lately have relied on sappy, predictable romance ("Drive Me Crazy,"...
The Art of War
The old Chinese "art of war," as explained in the action-conspiracy film "The Art of War," is to "win by destroying your enemy from within."
There's no war going on in this movie; in fact, China and the United States are about to sign an historic...
Solomon and Gaenor
"Solomon and Gaenor" is a beautifully tragic love story that borrows from one of the greats: Imagine Romeo and Juliet as a couple divided by religion and prejudice.
Solomon Levinsky (Ioan Gruffudd) is the son of a poor tailor in 1911 Wales. As Je...
The Original Kings of Comedy
Somehow Spike Lee has managed to make a film -- I'm sorry, a "joint" -- that is non-confrontational, non-controversial and that exists solely for the purpose of entertainment.
Who are you, and what have you done with the real Spike Lee?
"The ...
The Cell
From the first frame to the last, "The Cell" is a visually striking film, as gorgeous as it is grotesque, at times virtually unwatchable, yet impossible not to watch.
From director Tarsem Singh's often mind-blowing camera angles and Paul Laufer's...
Godzilla 2000
The problem with "Godzilla 2000" is that it's obviously not good enough to be a genuinely exciting action film, but it's also not BAD enough to be a "so-bad-it's-funny" camp-fest.
Forget the 1998 American "Godzilla" (oh, that I could forget it). ...
The Opportunists
In "The Opportunists," Christopher Walken plays the closest thing he's ever come to a regular guy: a former safe-cracker named Vic Kelly who's trying to go straight and live a normal life.
Trouble arises when a fellow claiming to be a long-lost I...
The Replacements
If you're going to enjoy "The Replacements" -- and it's the kind of movie that makes you really WANT to like it -- you'll have to overlook a few things.
Ignore the fact that the entire film is made of pasted-together cliches from other movies. Wh...
Bless the Child
For a film about the ultimate triumph of Good over Evil, "Bless the Child" sure is bleak and moody.
A New York City nurse named Maggie (Kim Basinger) is surprised one Christmas to find her strung-out sister Jenna (Angela Bettis) on her doorstep wi...
Autumn in New York
"Autumn in New York" was not screened for critics before it opened. Usually, this is because the film sucks and the studio -- in this case, MGM -- knows it. By keeping it from critics, they prevent bad opening-day reviews and make as much money as th...
An Affair of Love (French)
The French title -- "Une liaison pornographique" -- may have been more titillating, but "An Affair of Love" is a more apt description of what goes on in this ultra-modern but sweetly old-fashioned love story.
As recalled in separate interviews wi...
Cecil B. Demented
John Waters wrote and directed "Cecil B. Demented" as in indictment of Hollywood's watered-down mainstream mentality. Movies are generic and vapid, he says. We should reject them, not embrace them.
Fine, John. You know what? You're right. Most Ho...
The Tao of Steve
The "Steve" whose philosophy is espoused in Jenniphr Goodman's indie film is every studly Steve who ever lived in movies, Steve McQueen being the prime example.
These are the men who never seemed to care about getting the girl, but who always got ...
Space Cowboys
If you're going to make a movie in which old guys played by Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, James Garner and Donald Sutherland all go into space as astronauts, you've got the potential for a very entertaining film. Those are four charismatic, likabl...
Hollow Man
The concept behind "Hollow Man," summarized in its tagline -- "It's amazing what you can do when you don't have to look at yourself anymore" -- is an excitingly creepy one. We're used to invisible men being good guys, generally, trying to reverse wha...
Coyote Ugly
"Coyote Ugly" is the story of a naive small-town girl who follows her dream to the Big City, where she is caught up in the violent, sexual world of bartending.
Doe-eyed Violet (Piper Perabo) leaves South Amboy, N.J., for New York City, hoping to ...
Saving Grace
As "Waking Ned Divine" taught us, nothing is more quaint and amusing than a small Irish town full of dotty Irish people. "Saving Grace" is not quite as good as "Waking Ned Divine," but the spirit of sweetly anarchic villagers with no respect for the ...
Wonderland (2000)
When it uses intentionally choppy editing, hand-held cameras and grainy film stock, Michael Winterbottom's London drama "Wonderland" has the feel of a documentary. This is fitting, as the virtually plot-free film is often as uninteresting and slow-mo...
Nutty Professor II: The Klumps
Comedian Larry Miller is a very funny comic actor. It's too bad he has to get raped by a 12-foot hamster.
Such are the vicissitudes of "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps," a movie that starts out so simple, yet becomes so convoluted; a movie that is ...
Thomas and the Magic Railroad
It's a shame that the sweet, simple children's show "Thomas the Tank Engine" (based on the sweet, simple series of books) got turned into such a complicated, slow-paced movie.
Thomas himself makes what amounts to a cameo appearance in his own mov...
The Eyes of Tammy Faye (documentary)
Not that anyone asked, but "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" answers the question, "What ever happened to Tammy Faye Bakker?" in a style that makes for as entertaining and interesting a documentary as you'll see anytime soon.
The purpose of "Eyes" is to t...
What Lies Beneath
Robert Zemeckis has been producer for several horror movies, none of them particularly great examples of the genre ("House on Haunted Hill," "Bordello of Blood," etc.), but at least passable diversions, suggesting that to whatever extent he's been in...
Pokemon: The Movie 2000
Just like its predecessor, "Pokemon: The Movie 2000" is a shameless attempt to cash in on the Pokemon craze, which pretty much died down a long time ago. Also just like its predecessor, it's dull, sloppy, poorly dubbed and incomprehensible, and appea...
Loser
Allow me to be one of dozens of critics to say that "Loser" is both a title AND a review for this film. (There. Aren't I clever?)
The title character -- and the most likable person in the movie -- is Paul Tannek (Jason Biggs), a Midwesterner who ...
The In Crowd
The first rule of fairness in film criticism is that you have to judge a movie on its own terms. You can't say "Schindler's List" was a bad movie because it wasn't funny, or that "Tommy Boy" was a bad movie because it wasn't suspenseful, because thos...
Chuck & Buck
"Chuck & Buck" is a sweet-natured, touching film that is often hilarious as it explores what happens when one half of a childhood friendship grows up while the other half doesn't.
Chuck (Chris Weitz) and Buck (Mike White)were best friends as ...
X-Men
The slickly entertaining "X-Men" suffers only slightly from "Phantom Menace" syndrome: It's a pretty entertaining film on its own, but you can tell its sequel will be even better.
Faithfully, even lovingly, re-creating the comic book, director Bry...
The Five Senses
Jeremy Podeswa's "The Five Senses," which he wrote and directed, makes use of the gimmick implied by the title -- how are each of the five important to us? -- in a way that is subtle and non-gimmicky. It's a wistful, honest film with characters who a...
Shower (Mandarin)
"Shower" is a jovial film exploring an aspect of Chinese culture with which most Americans are utterly unfamiliar: the public bathhouse.
As presented here, the bathhouse is a major part of small-town society. It's where men sit around and play bo...
Scary Movie
If you have not seen "Scream," then there is no purpose in seeing "Scary Movie."
Of course, there's little purpose in seeing "Scary Movie" anyway; these are not the sort of movies that one sees for a reason, other than to be mindlessly entertaine...
The Kid
First of all, despite its title, PG rating, adorable trailers and Disney's egotistical attachment of the word "Disney's" to the name, "The Kid" (or, more accurately, "Disney's The Kid") is not a movie for kids.
Kids will be restless in this movie...
But I’m a Cheerleader
"But I'm a Cheerleader" is a film so enamored of its own premise that it never bothers to do anything with it, like a "Saturday Night Live" sketch with a clever joke that's ruined by the fact that it goes on forever.
The funny premise at issue is...
The Perfect Storm
"The Perfect Storm," which is ultimately a not-very-good movie, is basically a combination of "Twister" and "Armageddon" -- two other not-very-good movies.
It has a more intellectual and sophisticated look about it than those other movies; in fac...
The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle
"The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" can be summed up in one word: uneven.
Weighing the negatives against the positives, it's almost an even balance, though a few significant positives tip the scale, slightly, in favor of "good movie" instead ...
The Patriot
Mel Gibson has carved out his niche: Epic-Length, Loosely Fact-Based Movies About Long-Haired Sweaty Guys with Great Personal Charisma Whose Personal Tragedies Force Them to Get Involved in Bloody Wars Against England.
In "Braveheart II" -- I mea...
