With ABOUT SCHMIDT, Alexander Payne fixes the same acute eye he used in both CITIZEN RUTH and ELECTION to once again rip the façade of wholesome gentility from the upper middle class of the heartland of America and to show us the savagery beneath. Again Payne has chosen the milieu Nebraska, the home of the… Read More »
THE HOURS
THE HOURS begins with a suicide, a famous one at that. Virginia Woolf with a fierce deliberateness puts a heavy stone in her pocket and walks into a river. We see her head duck silently into the water and then her body floating delicately away, pulled by the current with a gentle urgency. By the… Read More »
DARKNESS FALLS
The best thing about DARKNESS FALLS is the fact that we will be able to settle once and for all whether or not there is a tooth fairy. If he or she exists, there is bound to be a lawsuit over how he or she is depicted in this film. Actually, not so much the depiction, though… Read More »
RECRUIT, THE
Its such a neat idea for a flick — an intricately plotted tale of spies playing both sides against the middle with a gazillion twists and turns and no one, especially the audience, quite knowing where the middle is until the end. And one day, if were good, well get a flick like that. For… Read More »
ROCK STAR
Mark Wahlberg looks yummy in tight leather pants and thats a good thing because theres not much else to recommend his latest flick, ROCK STAR. Its the standard tale of the dangers of getting what you wish for, of the hollowness of a life of too much sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Fortunately, he… Read More »
GODS AND GENERALS
The problem with having read the book on which a film is based is that no matter how hard you try, its hard to divorce that book from its adaptation playing out before you on the big screen. So it is with GODS AND GENERALS, the prequel to GETTYSBURG, and based on the novel by… Read More »
DAREDEVIL
Maybe it’s time to say something out loud that many of us have been thinking about Ben Affleck’s career at least since PEARL HARBOR. The only thing that could possibly explain why it refuses to die the death it so richly deserves is that Mr. Affleck must have at some point made a pact with… Read More »
THE JUDGE
THE JUDGE is everything thats wrong with studio bids for Oscar consideration. A carefully calculated effort designed to hit all the perceived necessary tropes to qualify as both important and as quality. Alas, it is neither. True, there are excellent performances by Robert Downey, Jr., Robert Duvall, Vera Farmiga, and Billy Bob Thornton, but they… Read More »
FRAILTY
In the opening scene of FRAILTY, a man calls his brother and tells him that the world is full of demons. He then takes a gun and blows his brains out. Like the film itself, this scene is telling the truth and lying at that same time. The intricate plotting of this disturbing Southern gothic… Read More »
WAKING LIFE
WAKING LIFE is that rarest of films, one that is unique. Take one slacker and cycle him, or at least his consciousness, through a series of conversations, lectures really, by devotes of different philosophies. But more, take the film footage and put it through an animation technique called interpolated rotoscoping and what you get is,… Read More »
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