AMAZING GRACE is an unabashedly sentimental film and this is as it should be. It recounts the 15-year struggle of William Wilberforce to end the slave trade in the Britsh Empire at the end of the 18th century. Wilberforce and his followers were driven by sentiment, coupled with principle, to take on the big business… Read More »
THE ASTRONAUT FARMER
With THE ASTRONAUT FARMER, the Polish Brothers (Michael directing, Mark acting, and both writing the script) use a folksy veneer to their mythmaking that belies a sly sophistication, weaving together Joseph Campbell at his most profound with the spirit of The Little Engine That Could. The result is a film that explores not just the… Read More »
THE NUMBER 23
It’s one thing when a film is bad from the very start. There is an honesty about it, a candor that is, in its own small way, praiseworthy. The same cannot be said about THE NUMBER 23. Instead of breaking one’s heart merely by being bad, it commits the far more heinous offense of offering… Read More »
ZODIAC (2007)
The pedestrian way to film the story of ZODIAC, the San Francisco Bay Area serial killer whose rampage extended from the late 1960s through the 1970s, would be to make a taut action thriller with snazzy directing tricks and gung-ho dialogue. Here was a psychopath who hunted people for sport and through a combination of smarts… Read More »
300
300 is a remarkable achievement. Of what, exactly, is a subject open to debate. Visually, it is arresting and beautiful in a Grand Guignol way. In fact, speaking strictly in aesthetic terms, it is a masterpiece. Speaking strictly in terms of tone, mood, and dialogue, well, that’s another matter entirely and one that is uneven at best.… Read More »
SHOOTER
At some point during an action/adventure/thriller flick, the audience is forced to make a choice about the suspension of disbelief. If the film in question is either a strict, but smartly written procedural or an over-the-top fantasy, such decisions are easy. Think the impudent hyperbole of 24 or the taut psychological games of BREACH. Alas,… Read More »
COLOUR ME KUBRICK – A TRUE. . .ISH STORY
Click here to listen to the interview with John Malkovich about THE DANCER UPSTAIRS.If all the world’s a stage, few took to strutting their hour upon it with the same moxie as Alan Conway. He’s the subject of Brian Cook’s semi-documentary, all comedy, look at the man who impersonated Stanley Kubrick, badly, for an adoring… Read More »
BLADES OF GLORY
Having taken on Christmas and NASCAR, Will Ferrell takes the next logical step with a typically loopy take on the seamy underbelly of competitive figure skating. The only obstacle he had in his way was making a farce that would be the equal of the doings in the real world of competitive skating. Tonya Harding,… Read More »
REIGN OVER ME
Sooner or later a film was bound to make 9/11 a glib plot point and with REIGN OVER ME, so it has come to pass. The good news is that this is one-half of a terrific film. The bad news is that Adam Sandler is in the other half. The worse news is that 9/11… Read More »
THE SITUATION
There is room for heartbreak but precious little for sentiment in Philip Haas’ THE SITUATION and its look at a particular time during the United States’ occupation of Iraq. Based on the experiences of journalist Wendy Steavenson, it is a stark film done in an almost documentary style that dwells on the contradictions of the… Read More »
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