It’s one thing when a film is bad from the very start. There is an honesty about it, a candor that is, in its own small way, praiseworthy. The same cannot be said about THE NUMBER 23. Instead of breaking one’s heart merely by being bad, it commits the far more heinous offense of offering… Read More »
PREMONITION
Blithely unfettered by internal logic, exhibiting the pacing of a banana slug, and boasting a heroine who makes Betty Crocker seem like a radical feminist, PREMONITION is exactly the reason that the Razzie Awards exist. Dishonoring the premise of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five”, it stars Sandra Bullock as Linda, a woman who comes unstuck in time.… Read More »
ZODIAC (2007)
The pedestrian way to film the story of ZODIAC, the San Francisco Bay Area serial killer whose rampage extended from the late 1960s through the 1970s, would be to make a taut action thriller with snazzy directing tricks and gung-ho dialogue. Here was a psychopath who hunted people for sport and through a combination of smarts… Read More »
300
300 is a remarkable achievement. Of what, exactly, is a subject open to debate. Visually, it is arresting and beautiful in a Grand Guignol way. In fact, speaking strictly in aesthetic terms, it is a masterpiece. Speaking strictly in terms of tone, mood, and dialogue, well, that’s another matter entirely and one that is uneven at best.… Read More »
SHOOTER
At some point during an action/adventure/thriller flick, the audience is forced to make a choice about the suspension of disbelief. If the film in question is either a strict, but smartly written procedural or an over-the-top fantasy, such decisions are easy. Think the impudent hyperbole of 24 or the taut psychological games of BREACH. Alas,… Read More »
BLADES OF GLORY
Having taken on Christmas and NASCAR, Will Ferrell takes the next logical step with a typically loopy take on the seamy underbelly of competitive figure skating. The only obstacle he had in his way was making a farce that would be the equal of the doings in the real world of competitive skating. Tonya Harding,… Read More »
REIGN OVER ME
Sooner or later a film was bound to make 9/11 a glib plot point and with REIGN OVER ME, so it has come to pass. The good news is that this is one-half of a terrific film. The bad news is that Adam Sandler is in the other half. The worse news is that 9/11… Read More »
THE SITUATION
There is room for heartbreak but precious little for sentiment in Philip Haas’ THE SITUATION and its look at a particular time during the United States’ occupation of Iraq. Based on the experiences of journalist Wendy Steavenson, it is a stark film done in an almost documentary style that dwells on the contradictions of the… Read More »
MEET THE ROBINSONS
One day geeks may indeed rule the world, if they don’t already, that is, and when they do, we could do worse that the scenario presented in MEET THE ROBINSONS. Much worse. Based on the book, “A Day with the Robinsons” by William Joyce, this gentle tale of family lost and found is a wild… Read More »
THE GOOD SHEPHERD – DVD
Doing the wrong things for the right, even honorable, reasons is the heart of the conflict in THE GOOD SHEPHERD, director Rober De Niro’s history of the CIA as told through the story of one of its founders. The tale is fictional, but the events, from the fall of the Third Reich to the Kennedy-era… Read More »
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