Sparing the viewer such extremes as the smug condescension of skeptical inquiry and the awful awe-filled wonder of crystal-toting New Age neo-pagans, CROP CIRCLES: QUEST FOR TRUTH, has only one agenda in its exploration of crop circles, listening to people with something to say beyond those extremes I mentioned before and then letting us draw… Read More »
FULL FRONTAL
Some films expand your horizons, some shift your paradigm, some make your spirit soar with the possibilities inherent in the human condition and some are so awful that they make you question the existence of God. That last would apply to the 109 minutes of my life wasted at Steven Soderbergh’s latest, FULL FRONTAL.The question… Read More »
SWEPT AWAY
When Lina Wertmuller, the elfin feminist gadfly of Italian cinema, made SWEPT AWAY back in 1974, it was a tantalizing and brutal take on the war between the sexes, between the classes and on the whole human comedy. When Guy Ritchie re-wrote the script for his wife, Madonna, I’m sure he thought it was a… Read More »
THE MAN FROM ELYSIAN FIELD
The thing to remember while watching THE MAN FROM ELYSIAN FIELDS is that this is a parable. Its relationship to the real world is symbolic, hence a male escort service named after the classical Greek take on the afterlife, and a writer who thinks that there is a place for his literate prose in a… Read More »
BIG TROUBLE
BIG TROUBLE, you might recall, was pulled from its original fall 2001 release because of the incidents of 9/11. The film’s finale features a plane hijacking and a really big bomb. Releasing it then would have been so far beyond wrong that a whole new circle would have had to be added to Hell order… Read More »
I SPY
Leaving aside I SPYs misogynist subtext that casts women as either mindless playthings or castrating bitches, lets focus on the real problem. Instead of bouncing along on farce and the chemistry of its co-stars, it chugs along bravely on its formula track to mediocrity. Its not particularly bright, either, so really, the only thing to… Read More »
THE SANTA CLAUSE 2
You have to admire the folks behind THE SANTA CLAUSE II. In this sequel-happy world, they didn’t rush right out to cash in on the success of the original. Instead, they waited eight whole years for a good premise before venturing back, and when you consider that in kids’ years that’s a whole generation, it was a… Read More »
GHOST SHIP
We don’t, on the whole, ask a great deal of the usual Halloween releases. A few good scares, maybe a scream or two and, just for effect, a scene that makes us think twice about having linguine with red clam sauce after the flick. If we also get a plot that doesn’t insult our intelligence, so… Read More »
FRIDA
At one point during Julie Taymor’s exquisite film, FRIDA, Diego Rivera tells Frida Kahlo that while he can only paint what he sees, she paints from the heart. And so it is as it should be that Taymor’s biopic of Frida’s life is the landscape of Frida’s heart than a straightforward telling of the events… Read More »
FEMME FATALE
There was a time when Brian De Palma was hailed as the worthy successor to Alfred Hitchcock. With DRESSED TO KILL, he seemed to have slipped a bit, from successor to Hitchcock into the role of paying tribute to him with a dead-on homage style of filmmaking. And then with BLOW OUT, well, he just sort of… Read More »
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