THE NANNY DIARIES rises above its whiffenpoof premise of a middle-class anthropologist charting the strange and treacherous milieu of an unfamiliar culture and comes up with something that is almost but not quite substantial. The anthropologist in question is the eponymous nanny, and the culture is the Upper East Side New York society in which… Read More »
THE INVASION
The original INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS was the product of a particular time, place, and mentality. Those would be the 50s, the United States, and the paranoia rampant at the time over the Communist Menace. Or the 50s, the United States, and the suffocation of conformity. Either way, it was a potent message at… Read More »
THE 11TH HOUR
With the exception of Leonardo DiCaprio, who produced and hosts this trenchant and occasionally lyrical documentary, you might not remember the names of everyone involved in the extended dialogue that makes up THE 11TH HOUR. It doesn’t matter. The ideas they expound, and the passion they exude, will remain indelibly etched in your mind. Their… Read More »
RESURRECTING THE CHAMP
RESURRECTING THE CHAMP shows the importance of casting and directing in turning a good script into a great film. Based loosely on the experiences of writer J.R. Moeringer, the writing here is solid, but Josh Hartnett as Eric Kennon, Jr., a reporter struggling the shadow of both his famous father and of his rising star… Read More »
BALLS OF FURY
Christopher Walken’s essential star quality, his absolute uniqueness as a performer, is never more apparent, or welcome, than when he appears in dreck. Even in the worst films, ENVY comes to mind, he is there, effortlessly finding something, anything, in a bad script and worse directing, to which a hapless audience can cling until the… Read More »
DELIRIOUS
DELIRIOUS is like a tidy little zen koan from Tom DiCillo. The story is about paparazzi and the celebs that they stalk, but both the comedy and the tragedy in this gentle satire comes from the schizophrenic struggle between public image and reality in those lives. The lesson involves three stories that intertwine by chance… Read More »
GOOD LUCK CHUCK
It’s not like one goes into a film like GOOD LUCK CHUCK with great expectations. And so it is all the more remarkable, dispiriting rather, when even a low bar, a very lowered bar, isn’t met. This flick isn’t just bad, it falls into that rare category of works that are actual harbingers of the… Read More »
THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB
At one point during THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB, based on the novel by Karen Joy Fowler, one member of the eponymous club watches another burst into tears and run into another room over an Austenian point. “Reading Jane Austen is a minefield” she opines, and so it is. Not because the subject matter of… Read More »
FIERCE PEOPLE
There is little in life sadder to see than a film that thinks it has a great deal to say of a revelatory or profound nature, but doesn’t. And thus is it with FIERCE PEOPLE, which stretches metaphors beyond their inherent tensile strength in order to inform its audience that the rich are different. As… Read More »
THE KINGDOM
THE KINGDOM wants to be SYRIANA by way of BLACK HAWK DOWN, but by earnestly following those templates, it renders itself an unsatisfying pastiche that has neither conviction nor surprise, much less the pervasive sense of uncertainty for which it so desperately strives. Instead, it comes across as schmaltzy, predictable, and insidiously imperialistic. It’s the… Read More »
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