One of the weakest and most ridiculous aspects of popular culture is its narcissistic now-ness. There’s often no then or later, and without past experience or the messy knowledge of life, modern entertainment media often seems poached in a neurotic teenage brainpan, entranced with its own ignorant tunnel vision. A…

If only. No one buys the farm in this Heathers-wannabe teen “satire,” a term used so loosely it’ll fly off in a stiff breeze. But the title is difficult to argue with, unless it’s to maintain that we’d all be better off if the film’s entire roster of characters had…

It would be a mighty sweet thing to see M. Night Shyamalan as the great redemptive storyteller he clearly thinks he is — or as he portrays himself in those American Express commercials. Genuine yarn-spinning, even as a doomed ambition, is virtually extinct in American movies; what had been the…

The Devil’s Sword (Mondo Macabro) Few trash movies live up to their reputation, but here’s a balls-out wonder that surpasses it. Grab a 12-pack of Bintang and cue up this jaw-unhinging slab of Indonesian sword-and-sorcery circa 1983 — a start-to-finish feast of martial arts, mullets, flying heads, vestal virgins, dry-ice…

Coming closer even than Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers to resembling the Chinese cover art for an Iron Butterfly album, Chen Kaige’s The Promise is psychedelia extremis. Hardly a minute of it passes without a concentrated dose of digital frou-frou and lavish cartoon-poetic imagery: floating ocean goddesses, flying swordsmen,…

We’ve all done it — killed an afternoon drinking in a pleasantly grungy roadhouse, boozily enjoying the illusion of having fallen off the grid, playing semiforgotten blues songs on an outdated jukebox, and thinking aloud: See, I should capture this feeling. This should be a movie. Sobered up, we don’t…

“You want an easy job, go join the Red Cross,” someone says well into Thank You for Smoking, a gleeful farce about capitalist mendacity based on Christopher Buckley’s 1994 best seller. The implication, made drummingly plain in the film’s every bon mot, is that our ethical barometers skew lazily toward…

You may not yet have lost your ardor and respect for the pressure-point hammerblow Quentin Tarantino executed on American movies, but it’s difficult at this late date not to view him as an imperative inoculation with unfortunate side effects: gas, bloating, dizziness, delusions of cleverness. Imitators flock when coolness seems…

Breasts (First Run) Honest, compassionate, and funny, this documentary is remarkable for the bravery of its participants, who bare their breasts as they speak about them. The film delivers 22 women of all shapes, sizes, ages, races, and orientations — all of whom have interesting, surprising things to say about…

The Tenants (Sony) Fifteen seconds into the video for “Nuthin but a G Thang,” it was obvious that Snoop Dog had charisma to spare. More than a decade later, with his performance as ’70s-era radical author Willie Spearmint, it’s official: The man can act. Snoop’s shambling, searing performance is just…

Anyone who remembers the 1977 Wes Craven film The Hills Have Eyes, which was and remains a piece of Milwaukee-beer shit, remembers it because (A) they had a memorable fuck-or-puke night at the aging neighborhood drive-in; (B) Michael Berryman’s uniquely hairless mug, which glared from the video store horror sections…

Walk the Line (Fox) No matter what a junkie does with his spare time — say, redefine country music, or forge one of history’s most enduring personas — movies about junkies are a drag to watch. So it’s too bad this Johnny Cash biopic is a by-the-numbers fall-and-redemption tale. A…

Didn’t Richard Donner retire? A 1980s star-director name, among many, that should now send bolts of discouraging dread down your spine, Richard Donner may well be seeing his filmmaking skills peak with 16 Blocks — even if saying it’s his best, least flatulent, most efficient film is tantamount to saying…