Showing a lack of imagination and a willingness to mine every applicable sports cliché that is stunning in several senses of the word, Ron Howard has taken one of the greatest comeback stories ever and turned it into a cloying bit of fluff. CINDERELLA MAN is handsomely mounted, steeped in period art direction, and features… Read More »
HIMALAYA (L’ENFANCE D’UN CHEF)
When Eric Valli first traveled the Dolpo Valley of Nepal, which may be with the exception of the Easter Islands, the most remote inhabited area on earth, he was struck by more than the stark and powerful beauty of the terrain. He was enthralled by the mountain people he met, their strength, their openness and most of… Read More »
ASYLUM
For a big chunk of ASYLUM, Natasha Richardson wears a shade of lipstick that is just a hair’s breadth off of being the right color for her. It’s emblematic of the film as a whole, which misses the mark when it comes to its stated purpose of delving into the madness and mystery of passion.… Read More »
OLIVER TWIST
Roman Polanski’s take on the Dickens classic, OLIVER TWIST, is a respectful one, and by respectful, I mean safe. Nowhere is there the distinct voice of the auteur that could raise a gaggle of goosebumps with the perfectly positioned camera angle that one finds in ROSEMARY’S BABY, CHINATOWN, or THE PIANIST. There is none of… Read More »
TWO FOR THE MONEY
The human mind is an amazing thing. Over the course of evolution, it has developed a host of fascinating mechanisms geared towards its survival in any number of harsh environments, be it the plains of Africa a million years ago, or the terrors of bad cinema at today’s local multiplex. It’s the latter that stirred… Read More »
GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK
In a lesser film about Edward R. Murrow and the way he used television to bring down Joseph McCarthy, there would have been the obligatory unburdening scene with his wife. He would articulate the risks involved in what he was undertaking personally, professionally, and financially, have an emotional breakdown of some sort, and Mrs. Murrow… Read More »
WINDHORSE
Someone once said that one murder is a tragedy, a million murders is a statistic. Thats the reason Academy Award-winning documentarian Paul Wagners first feature film, WINDHORSE, about the plight of the Tibetan people under Chinese occupation is so moving. He looks at the effect of that occupation on one family, and, by extension, the entire culture.… Read More »
NORTH COUNTRY
I don’t know that NORTH COUNTRY can even be said to have its heart in the right place. I’m not even sure that it has a heart. In recounting the events leading up to a sexual harassment class-action suit brought by a suitably plucky female miner in Minnesota, it cheapens the story “inspired” by actual… Read More »
THE WAR WITHIN
THE WAR WITHIN charts a different sort of territory in its examination of the psychology of suicide bombers. Its protagonist, Hassan(co-writer Ayad Akhtar), isn’t a refugee, isn’t psychotic, isn’t an extremist of any kind, and far from living a hopeless existence with no future and a murky past, he’s cosmopolitan, well-educated, and more western than… Read More »
GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN’
I can see why this seemed like such a good idea. Jim Sheridan, a director who has made brilliant films about the strife and violence in Northern Ireland and has done so without becoming maudlin, put at the helm of a film that deals with the gangsta culture of violence in contemporary New York. The… Read More »
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