Milestone in motion picture history: On Halloween weekend 2006, Saw III grossed $34.3 million to become the Iraq war-era’s bloodiest chart-topping torture movie whose victims don’t include Jesus of Nazareth. Only God or Jack Valenti knows how this work of pure entertainment got away with an R rating “for strong…
When a red-blooded, macho, flag-waving, Bush-voting American country-music fan looks at a gorgeous blond who also happens to make his kind of music, one doesn’t normally expect him to pay particular attention to the actual substance of her conversation. Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines didn’t think anyone would either,…
There’s a scene about halfway through Catch a Fire during which freedom fighters — men and woman, boasting nicknames such as “Pete My Baby” and “Hot Stuff” — are being trained at an African National Congress safe house in Mozambique. Their ranks consist of South Africans who’ve been politicized by…
If the greatest magicians never reveal their tricks, then Christopher Nolan wouldn’t make it past the children’s birthday party circuit. It’s not that Nolan has anything against the old hocus-pocus, but it’s the practical side of magic that appeals to him most — the nuts-and-bolts explanation behind the seemingly impossible…
I guess it doesn’t matter where I begin,” reasons the adult narrator of Running with Scissors, the inevitable Oscar contender adapted from Augusten Burroughs’s wacky memoir of coming out as a gay teen in his adoptive guru’s carnivalesque commune. “No one is gonna believe me anyway.” No one? In fact,…
Following an amusing supporting turn in the minimum-wage comedy Waiting… , Dane Cook takes the lead in this similarly silly cinematic concoction, which sees his character Zack barely working at a Costco-like warehouse store. Was Ryan Reynolds not available? As a lead, Cook lacks any significant character traits beyond his…
American Dreamz (Universal) Till this, Paul Weitz had a stellar filmography, a career in ascension: American Pie (good), About a Boy (great), In Good Company (absolutely perfect). But this, er, satire about a dumb American president (Dennis Quaid, channeling whassisname) trying to get smart, a cynical wannabe singer trying to…
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season Two (Universal) Anytown USA (Film Movement/Repnet) Behind Enemy Lines II: Axis of Evil (Fox) The Big Black Comedy Show (Fox) Big Love: The Complete First Season (HBO) The Break-Up (Universal) Clean, Shaven: The Criterion Collection (Criterion) Feast: Unrated (Weinstein) Frankenhooker (Anthem) Charmed: The Complete Sixth Season…
Barry Levinson hasn’t made a movie of note in almost a decade — since 1997’s Wag the Dog, to be precise, and even that was less a work of substantial relevance than a bit of lucky timing based on someone else’s better novel. Granted, it had its moments — at…
God is in the details no matter what you believe, but Jesus Camp is content to introduce its appalled exposé of Christian youth indoctrination with shots of a fast-food- and flag-lined highway and the words Missouri, U.S.A. Welcome to Hell, kids. Missouri — yikes! — is among the holy lands…
If your face doesn’t immediately light up at the thought of Johnny Knoxville launching himself airborne on the back of a giant rocket, or Chris Pontius slipping a sock puppet of a mouse on his dick before inserting it into a hungry snake’s lair, or Steve-O jamming a fish hook…
A Prairie Home Companion (New Line) This all-star sing-along — with Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Tommy Lee Jones, Virginia Madsen, Woody Harrelson, etc. — that wears its smile bright and wide looked for all the world like a summertime sleeper hit. Not so much, even though no movie this year…
The Andy Milonakis Show: The Complete Second Season (Paramount) The A-Team: Season Five, the Final Season (Universal) Bloodied but Unbowed: Bloodshot Records’ Life in the Trenches (Bloodshot) Carlos Mencia: No Strings Attached (Paramount) Click (Sony) Don’t Go in the Woods Alone: 25th Anniversary Edition (Code Red) Everybody Hates Chris: The…
No studio director was a greater hero to the Hong Kong new wave than Martin Scorsese. John Woo dedicated The Killer to him; Wong Kar-wai modeled his first feature, As Tears Go By, after Mean Streets; Taxi Driver’s rain-slicked slo-mo urban stylistics worked their way into countless lesser HK films…
A pleasantly restrained Martin Lawrence voices the likable grizzly bear hero of this computer-generated feature. Raised by a ranger, he’s lost when exiled to the woods, thanks to a wild-eyed mule deer (Ashton Kutcher, channeling Donkey from Shrek). As is usual in computer animation, the film’s look is overbright, its…
Lewis Black: Red, White & Screwed (HBO) Like many other Daily Show success stories, Lewis Black is a comedian made for these times; his facial contortions and verbal tics are expressions of the Bush-era phrase “outrage overload.” But unlike other big names in political stand-up right now (David Cross, Bill…
Avenger (Warner Bros.) Calvaire: The Ordeal (Palm) Cedric the Entertainer: Taking You Higher (HBO) Changing Times (Koch Lorber) Confidence (Lionsgate) Deadfall (Lionsgate) Edmond (First Independent) The Greatest American Hero: The Complete Series (Anchor Bay) Harvey Toons: The Complete Collection (Sony Wonder) Humphrey Bogart: The Signature Collection, Volumes 1 & 2…
The sex is real in John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus; only the setting — an animated New York cityscape, benignly watched over by a fluorescent Statue of Liberty — is fake. To an extent, that describes the movie: a sexually daring, dramatically timid roundelay that employs unsimulated twosomes, threesomes, and even…
Watching The Guardian, you will learn that the U.S. Coast Guard’s rescue swimmers rank among the bravest and least heralded of military personnel, selflessly hurling themselves into raging currents or hurricane swells to save a single human life. But I doubt that even these knights in neoprene armor could rescue…
Feast isn’t the least bit artful, but it is gleefully gruesome, which might be all one can ask of a no-budget monster movie. As the film opens, a freaked-out stranger bursts into an isolated desert tavern to warn the dozen or so people inside that man-eating creatures, possibly from another…
The Big Animal (Milestone) It’s a simple yet lesser known law of comedy: Camels are always funny. There are the jaws that drool and chew side to side, the front legs that move like a human’s, the humps — but mostly it’s the eyes: There’s something of Buddha in a…
Beowulf & Grendel (Anchor Bay) The Book of Daniel: The Complete Series (Universal) Bratz: Passion Fashion Diamondz (Fox) Con Man (Docurama) Curious George (Universal) Danger Mouse: The Final Seasons (A&E) Daniel Boone: Season 1 and Season 2 (Goldhil) Dark Shadows: DVD Collection 26 (MPI) Dracula: 75th Anniversary Edition (Universal) Drop…
