Forget Mad Hot Ballroom. The real dance documentary hit of the summer is more likely to be Rize. After all, which do you think the kids are going to find more appealing: Formal steps that require suits, partners, and schoolteachers; or shaking the booty and slamming into fellow dancers while…
Kicking & Screaming might be the most predictable movie of the year, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Think about it: How many times have you gone to a movie and gotten far less than you were expecting? Here that’s not a concern; you might not get more than…
“Somewhere this could all be happening right now,” spoke the narrator in the trailer for the first Star Wars movie (thereafter known as Episode IV: A New Hope), and to those who were small children then, it rang true. For an entire generation the Star Wars trilogy could never be…
If you’re expecting a psychological thriller out of Mindhunters, and you buy a ticket for the movie, you will indubitably feel cheated. But break down the film’s title to its most literal sense — hunting for a mind, presumably because those involved were out of theirs — and you’ll know…
“No more soccer!” declares small-time thug Sing (writer-director-star Stephen Chow) as he vigorously stomps on a child’s ball. In the context of Kung Fu Hustle, it’s a pathetic attempt by Sing to make himself look tough. The larger signal, however, is to followers of Chow’s work — it’s a direct…
The Ring, Gore Verbinski’s 2002 remake of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu, offered sufficient closure that it didn’t exactly demand a sequel. The horror lay in wondering why a mysterious videotape kills viewers seven days after they watch it; to a lesser extent, there was the mystery of the creepy girl, face…
Everyone with a TV set remembers President Bush in the flight suit, landing on that aircraft carrier, standing in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner, and triumphantly declaring that major combat operations in Iraq were over. Two years on, many feel like asking what exactly he meant by that. Gunner…
If you’re looking for an escapist shoot-’em-up action adventure and figure a Bruce Willis flick is a reliable option, think twice. Hostage certainly delivers violence and heroics, but not in a way everyone will enjoy. Children and dogs die brutally, and the villains are so thoroughly hateful that even the…
Come this time next year, The Jacket may well occupy the slot in movie discourse that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind does now — that of the film that coulda-shoulda-woulda gotten more Oscar nominations if only it hadn’t come out so early in the year and been forgotten by…
First, the good news. Uncharacteristically for a February release targeting African-American viewers, Diary of a Mad Black Woman is not a yuppie romantic comedy featuring Gabrielle Union and Morris Chestnut. Anthony Anderson and Eddie Griffin are nowhere to be seen, and despite the fact that the most memorable character is…
You have to hand it to Sean Penn. Okay, you don’t absolutely have to, and if you’re a Red Stater through-and-through, you certainly won’t want to, but give him some credit. After being pilloried in the press for visiting Iraq under Saddam’s reign, torn apart by house cats in a…
It’s easy to bash the big-budget blow-’em-up epics that Hollywood wants audiences to like, but harder, as a critic, to go against the tide of movies deemed Important Artistic Triumphs. I’ve always been a contrarian, though, so with due apologies to my critical colleagues, here are the movies you’re wrong…
Flash back to 1999. George Lucas steps back into the director’s chair after two decades of absence and produces the critically derided Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Though its visuals are praised, many writers note the stilted acting and suggest that Lucas’s extensive use of bluescreens rather than…
Perhaps it’s because we see real-life violence on the news every day now, not to mention in political documentaries, but nobody seems too worried about excessive bloodletting in the movies anymore. That’s good news for gorehounds. The year kicked off with Ashton Kutcher impaling his own hands in The Butterfly…
Have we finally outgrown the notion that movies have to be cloying and cute in order to be acceptable to children? It sure seemed like it this year. Possibly the most sentimental major entry was The Polar Express, but that was due only to the source material — director Robert…
This much can be said for the movie version of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events: Its villain, Count Olaf, just might be Jim Carrey’s finest screen role. A bitter, would-be master thespian who delights in donning ridiculous disguises and adopting funny accents, he doesn’t seem that far removed…
If you’ve already decided to see Ocean’s Twelve, it’s probably best not to read much about it. Unlike its predecessor, a remake that clung to a hoary heist formula, the sequel contains ample pleasures, most of which amuse as the result of surprises both great and small. There’s no one…
It takes mighty big stones to name your horror movie Saw, knowing full well that that’s popular fan-slang for Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a movie worshiped by gorehounds worldwide. When you take that name for your own, you had damn well better deliver a memorable, worthy contender. First-time feature…
Hey, have you heard about that new Danish film that just came out? Distributed by Lars von Trier’s Zentropa Entertainments, has the same star as one of the Dogme 95 movies, and features a dysfunctional family full of people who yell at each other? Wait . . . don’t run…
It should go without saying that when one goes to see a movie about giant killer snakes, the main point of the whole endeavor is to watch people get eaten by giant killer snakes. Hardly rocket science, that. But while Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid does feature a…
It’s a real credit to Intimate Strangers director Patrice Leconte that even though he uses a couple of ridiculous contrivances to get the plot going, the overall film still feels very true. Leconte has a gift for depicting the quirks of odd relationships; his last film, Man on the Train,…
You may have already heard the stories about A Home at the End of the World. In what many viewers have deemed a big loss, Colin Farrell’s penis no longer appears in the film. The official line is that test audiences found it too distracting, though that seems unlikely, given…
