A WAKE IN PROVIDENCE isn?t groundbreaking, isn?t particularly original, nor is it something that you?ll still be mulling over days or weeks after you?ve seen it. What this blend of comedy and drama does have is one sterling virtue that places it in a very special category. I had a great time watching it. It?s… Read More »
THE UPSIDE OF ANGER
From an evolutionary sense, anger makes sense. It might have sent civilization teetering off balance, but in individuals, it insures that you got enough to eat and a good seat by the fire, not to mention a better shot at having your chromosomes play in the genetic pool. Like most stuff that did us all… Read More »
ELIZABETHTOWN
If you are lucky enough to somehow manage to see only the first ten minutes or so of Cameron Crowe’s ELIZABETHTOWN, you will come away thinking that this has the makings of something interesting, dark, and just a little iconoclastic. Alas, it is followed by almost two hours of meandering randomness that quickly dispenses with… Read More »
SHOPGIRL
In the voice-over narration Steve Martin reads at the beginning of SHOPGIRL, based on his novella and for which he provided the screenplay, he informs the audience that the eponymous wage-earner of the piece, Mirabelle Buttersfield (Claire Danes), is special, if only people would realize it. He also informs us that she came to Los… Read More »
PRIME
It is a testament to Meryl Streep’s stellar acting skills that she had kept her role in PRIME from devolving into a shrill caricature of a Jewish mother. And this is especially important given that hers is the only fully realized character to be found in this otherwise dreary excuse for a romantic comedy. The… Read More »
2005 TOP TEN LIST — THE BEST AND THE WORST
The end of one year and the beginning of another is a time of both reflection and excess. The former expressed by taking stock of what has transpired in the year just ended, and the latter, perhaps spurred a bit by the former, part of a greater biological imperative to stave off winter’s cold by… Read More »
BROKEN FLOWERS — DVD
Jim Jarmusch’s BROKEN FLOWERS has been accused of being his most accessible film. Perhaps it’s because the narrative is more linear than his last film, the equally brilliant COFFEE AND CIGARETTES. Perhaps it’s because its star, Bill Murray, plays a character that is facing his mid-life crisis in a way that is more identifiable than… Read More »
ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL
Most people get that slap upside of the head called reality when they leave school. For Jerome Platz (Max Minghella), it’s when he starts school, art school, that is, Strathmore Institute, to be precise, the art school of his dreams and the venue for Terry Zwigoff’s ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL, based on the comic book of… Read More »
STEP UP
STEP UP is a surprisingly wholesome bit of fluff with an amiably charismatic cast and a script that should be cited for violating the basic tenets of solid scriptwriting. Uneven, undecided, and rife with everything except aliens from space and a natural disaster, it’s further hobbled by cliches, bouts of stale dialogue, inadvisable turns into… Read More »
CONVERSATIONS WITH OTHER WOMEN
A chance meeting between two strangers (Helena Bonham Carter, pretty in pink, and Aaron Eckhart, suave in a tux) at a wedding reception in New York City starts the action in CONVERSATIONS WITH OTHER WOMEN, a slippery delight with as much tension as a standard thriller, but the smarts of a literate drama, both of which… Read More »
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