With all the hubbub in Oliver Stone’s W, it might be easy to miss the key line in it. That would be the one delivered by W himself. He’s having a heart-to-heart with the clergyman who is shepherding him through his born-again experience. In a moment of anguish, he bemoans the fact that people just… Read More »
W
MAX PAYNE
MAX PAYNE begins laudably enough. Based on the video game of the same name, it reproduces the graytone pen-and-ink world with appropriate shadows, stark lighting, and a hard-boiled protagonist that would make Sam Spade look like a cream puff. This is a man who literally crawls on broken glass without much noticing. Most of the… Read More »
ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO
Kevin Smith has the unique ability to find the tenderest of emotions in the most profane of situations, and that talent is what makes ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO more than just a one-note dirty joke. Not that there aren’t a lot of dirty jokes working here. There are. A LOT. Frequently. Mostly. The… Read More »
BALLAST
Set in the rural Mississippi delta, BALLAST brings home the effects and consequences of self-imposed isolation with one arresting image: a stain on a wall. It got there when Lawrence (Michael J. Smith, Sr.) attempted suicide in the wake of his twin brother’s death. Though a neighbor was there to check on him, though that… Read More »
PRIDE AND GLORY
PRIDE AND GLORY offers passionate performances in a story that is a series of letter-perfect clichés. The topic is police corruption grafted onto the innernecine struggles of the Tierneys, an Irish-American family of New York City cops with a thorny problem of malfeasance in their midst. The thorn is Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell), the cop… Read More »
ROLE MODELS
ROLE MODELS is ragged around the edges and pretty threadbare in between. Co-writer Paul Rudd, sharing credit with a small army of fellow screenplayers, has a genuine gift for a sight gag, and there plenty popping up here. Alas, he falls short with all the stuff that links them together. Yet, for all its failings… Read More »
MADAGASCAR — ESCAPE 2 AFRICA
MADAGASCAR 2 ESCAPE TO AFRICA begins with a backstory, the better to set up the forestory of this animated piece. Alex (Ben Stiller), the dancing king of New York, was not always an inhabitant of the Central Park Zoo. Nor was always an inhabitant of the New World, for that matter. No, when he was… Read More »
THE CHANGELING
THE CHANGELING, directed and produced by Clint Eastwood, is based on a true story so Kafka-esque that it staggers the imagination. In March of 1928, Christine Collins came home from work to discover her nine-year-old son, Walter, was missing. Her call to the Los Angeles police for help was rebuffed because the boy hadn’t been… Read More »
TWILIGHT
TWILIGHT, the film version of Stephenie Meyer’s young adult novel, operates on two levels of fantasy, one traditional that speaks to many of the roiling and contradictory impulses that lurk in the collective subconscious of us all: to dominate, to fit in, to cheat death. It also speaks to the other irresistible impulses, roiling and… Read More »
CADILLAC RECRDS
Writer/director Darnell Martin has an obvious passion for the blues and for the men and women who sang them. It comes across in every frame of CADILLAC RECORDS, based on the true story of Chess Records, whose founder, Leonard Chess, had a penchant for handing out Cadillacs to his recording artists. Executive producer and pop… Read More »
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