THE REBEL broke box-office records when it opened in its native Vietnam, becoming the biggest grossing film made by the Vietnamese film industry. It’s also the most expensive film to date made there, and this is no surprise. Beautifully shot, well acted, and boasting some memorable martial arts sequences, at heart it is a film… Read More »
TRISTAN AND ISOLDE
There is a reason that the story of TRISTAN AND ISOLDE has lingered. The original telling from the Middle Ages was a heartbreaking tale of the true love, albeit inspired by a love potion gone astray, of the eponymous couple at painful odds with the heartfelt loyalty they both felt for her husband, King Mark.… Read More »
LAST HOLIDAY
THE LAST HOLIDAY is an updated remake of the 1950 film of the same name that boasted a screenplay by J.B. Priestly and Alec Guiness in the starring role. Naturally, one approaches the remake with trepidation. And yet, in a move as cleverly rendered as the original film, the filmmakers have made a few changes,… Read More »
UNDERWORLD EVOLUTION
I blame the CSI-ing of the culture. Why else would UNDERWORLD EVOLUTION have a scene in which vampire corpses, sheathed in body bags, are taken to a ship docked at a suitably foggy pier, and autopsied? Scalpels, draining tables, the whole deal, not to mention animations of things going on in the bodies of the undead. Pondering that,… Read More »
NANNY MCPHEE
There is something deeply satisfying about a fable with a time-honored story line that may offer no surprises as to plot points as it barrels along to its conclusion, but that does, nonetheless, pay strict attention to the serious moral lesson to be learned from it while also strictly adhering to a loopy, almost anarchic… Read More »
ANNAPOLIS
The first question that comes to mind after watching ANNAPOLIS is this. If the powers behind this pasteboard mockup of a film wanted to remake AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN, why didn’t they just go ahead and do that? The second question, why if they wanted to remake ROCKY, didn’t they just go ahead and… Read More »
THE PINK PANTHER
Peter Sellers is so deeply identified with monumentally bumbling Inspector Clouseau that one wonders why Steve Martin would want to take a crack at the character with a remake of THE PINK PANTHER. Others, including the character’s co-creator, Blake Edwards, have taken their shot and failed miserably. Martin, who co-wrote the script, at least makes… Read More »
FREEDOMLAND
In FREEDOMLAND, Samuel L. Jackson’s character, Lorenzo, spends a great deal of time professing his belief in God. There is nothing in his life or in the lives of anyone around him that would back up that belief, never mind that at one point he proclaims that after 22 years of being a cop, he… Read More »
DOOGAL
When a film is released without a press screening, as was the case with DOOGAL, one expects to find in it a certain level of ineptitude. Here, though, is something that transcends merely being bad, merely inspiring a torrent of vitriol before consigning it to the more insulated portions of one’s memory. This has done… Read More »
16 BLOCKS
Think of 16 BLOCKS as Bruce Willis’ transition film. It’s as though now that he is gamely moving towards his golden years, he is also gamely moving beyond the action films that filled his cinematic oeuvre and bedeviled those who had to endure them when he kept making them even after they had reached the… Read More »
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