Let’s be honest: As much as people may complain about Spike Lee’s public pontifications on race, or his controversial stances, or his being a rabble-rouser, that’s the way we like him. What first comes to mind when you hear his name mentioned? Certainly not Girl 6 or The Original Kings…
In a perfect world, any documentary about televangelists narrated by RuPaul and a couple of sock puppets would be hailed as the unquestionable conceptual masterpiece of the year. Alas, those stodgy Academy voters just don’t understand cross-dressers, religious broadcasting, or foot-warmers made to look like dogs. And so the best…
Only in the movies could a kid that looks and acts like Jason Biggs be called a loser. Let’s see: charming conversationalist, big smile, washboard abs? Oh yeah, those’ll make a guy unpopular, for sure. About the only thing that’s surprising about Biggs’s character in Loser is that the filmmakers…
Is there a more bankrupt genre than the parody movie? So many movies nowadays are so painfully self-aware and referential anyway that there often isn’t much left to make fun of, which is especially the case for Kevin Williamson-penned films like Scream and its clones, clichéd teen slasher movies that…
It’s the year 3028, and man … is an endangered species! (Haven’t we heard that somewhere before, like last month?) But this time around, the threat is a little more intimidating than those effeminate, Xenu-worshipping Conehead psychologists in platform boots. The villains in Fox’s new animated spectacular Titan A.E. are…
Could there be any less appealing image than that of a fat Martin Lawrence in drag scratching his rear, as on the poster for Big Momma’s House? The idea of sitting through any movie promoted in such a fashion brings to mind the hideously awful It’s Pat: The Movie, or…
Quick: Who was the most unbelievable movie character to appear onscreen in recent memory? Jar-Jar Binks? Mini-Me? South Park’s Saddam Hussein? All may be supplanted by Joline (Heather Graham), the main character in Committed. See, Joline is a young, hip New York club owner who actually does what she says…
You’ve got to feel sorry for the Scottish Board of Tourism. First the Loch Ness monster is exposed as a fake, and then their nation’s film industry starts to pick up. Normally a successful film industry would be great for a country’s image, but in the case of Scotland, it…
What if fate has something horrific in store for you, and you can’t escape it? It’s an idea that’s been around for a long time, from Greek myths like Oedipus Rex, to the New Testament, to EC Comics and The Twilight Zone. Cinematically we tend to prefer the idea that…
Think Pretty Woman meets The Monica Lewinsky Story and you’ve got A Girl Called Rosemarie. Based on Germany’s biggest political scandal of the 1950s, Bernd Eichinger’s film (originally a miniseries for German TV) follows Rosemarie (Nina Hoss), an orphan who learned at an early age that sex gives her power…
Willie Morris’s autobiographical novel, My Dog Skip, is a nearly perfect piece of bedtime reading for kids and their parents. Each chapter is virtually a self-contained anecdote, the descriptions of World War II-era Mississippi are lush and dreamlike, and the escapades of the central canine character, depicted as smarter, faster,…
When Paul Thomas Anderson’s second feature, Boogie Nights, was released in 1997, critics and film industry types fell over themselves to designate Anderson the next big thing, an auteur in the footsteps of Scorsese and Coppola. His film turned Mark Wahlberg from a has-been underwear model and rapper into a…
Let’s hear it for sports movies! The most avid sports fan occasionally can be bored by lackluster games, but the casual spectator also can appreciate what the big screen can do for an athletic contest, even one played by actors rather than athletes: the closer-than-life closeups, the dramatic use of…
Harmony Korine’s directorial debut, Gummo, was like a hard smack to the face of contemporary cinema. Relentlessly nonlinear, filled with disturbing imagery and impossible to synopsize, it caused many viewers to wince in pain, and persuaded even more to walk quickly past its poster of a slightly misshapen child’s head…
Writer-director-star Daphna Kastner seems to have designed her second feature, Spanish Fly, primarily to make out with as many attractive Spanish men as she can. Male actor-directors do this sort of thing all the time, usually with a lot less flair. Perhaps it’s the female touch, but Kastner has a…
The last time Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in an apocalypse-theme action movie featuring a Guns N’ Roses song, it was Terminator 2, the biggest and loudest action picture that had ever been seen. Since then he’s produced one bona fide balls-to-the-wall action flick (True Lies), one pale imitation (Eraser), and a…
Earth, an Indian Gone with the Wind, is set against the backdrop of India in 1947, when the British moved out shortly after dividing their colony into India and Pakistan. The movie examines the ensuing violent turmoil through the eyes of seven-year-old Lenny-Baby (Maia Sethna, making an impressive acting debut),…
Based on his directorial debut, there are three things we can safely say about Antonio Banderas: 1) He’s an actor’s director — he can pick a good cast and coax great performances from them; 2) he knows how to make a good image and where to point the camera; and…
