Woody Allen might have done well to end his expatriate adventure in London with last year’s intriguing morality tale Match Point. This alleged return to comedy — starring Point’s nubile Scarlett Johansson as a naive American journalism student, Allen himself as the phobia-rattled magician who poses as her father, and…
In the latest extravaganza from executive producers Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, millions of dollars and long hours in the digital animation studios have produced … a photorealistic, computer-animated, generic American suburb! Location costs must be getting pretty damn expensive nowadays. As Monster House begins, we follow a leaf slowly…
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…
This is a note-for-note cover of its predecessor, 1994’s Clerks, the charmingly crude black-and-white heap upon which writer-director Kevin Smith built his frustratingly uneven career as a maker of cult favorites about average people leading below-average lives. If the footage weren’t in color and if the actors reprising their roles…
Edison Force (Sony) Gritty cop stuff must write itself — just make sure everyone’s tough, corrupt, and talking like they stole Mickey Spillane’s thesaurus. Then cast Justin Timberlake. Screech! Employing the talented (at music) popster as a crusading journalist isn’t this lame flick’s worst flaw — merely the one you’ll…
The Best of She-Ra Princess of Power (Brentwood) Carnivale: The Complete Second Season (HBO) The Cavern (Sony) Clean (Palm) Don’t Move (Wellspring) An Early Frost (Wolfe) Flash Gordon: The Complete Series (Brentwood) The Incredible Hulk: The Complete First Season (Universal) Intimate Stories (New Yorker) Jack of All Trades: The Complete…
Owen Wilson has moved up in the world: He’s gone from crashing weddings to crashing entire marriages. In the listless farce You, Me and Dupree, his eponymous ne’er-do-well shows up on the doorstep of his childhood friend Carl (Matt Dillon), having lost his job and been evicted from his apartment…
Perhaps no one can pinpoint the exact moment Vaudeville died, but there’s a moment early in Strangers with Candy when you’d swear you had just witnessed the death of visual comedy. En route to her first day of high school, a tarty middle-age jailbird — this is not a Disney…
Gymnast Dan Millman (Scott Mechlowicz) is one of the best at what he does, and he has it all — perfect abs, a big bulge in his crotch, beautiful girlfriends, and the ability to balance full beer glasses on his feet. There’s just one small problem: He has bad dreams…
Grand Prix (Warner Bros.) John Frankenheimer, as underrated as he was brilliant, made a racing picture in 1966 that’s yet to be topped 40 years later. James Garner suffered through the director’s churlish demands (which Frankenheimer reveals and owns up to, in archival footage on one of the documentaries here)…
Basic Instinct 2 (Sony) Bill Maher: New Rules (HBO) Bridezillas: The Complete 1st and 2nd Seasons (Weinstein) Care Bears: Hearts at Sea (Family Home Ent.) Dennis Miller: All In (HBO) Dolla Morte (Grimoire) The Dudesons Movie (Rhino) The Ellen Show: The Complete Series (Sony) ER: The Complete Fifth Season (Warner…
The fact that 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was such a hit had much to do with viewers’ prelaunch expectations, which were approximately none. Who could have been blamed for thinking a Gore Verbinski-directed, Jerry Bruckheimer-produced movie based on a theme-park ride would proffer…
Slipped into the summer movie season like acid in your Happy Meal, Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly is a blockbuster of counterprogramming. No matter that the dude from The Matrix is its star — or would be, if he weren’t half-hidden under a thick swath of digital paint. Linklater’s return…
It may not be an “iconic manifestation of civilization,” as documentarian Ken Burns proclaims, but the New York Times crossword puzzle is undoubtedly an institution — and director Patrick Creadon wants to understand why. His sweet, lightly amusing, and largely superficial documentary brings the story to a climax at the…
The Matador (Weinstein) Richard Shepard’s spec script, sent to Pierce Brosnan’s production company out of desperation, wound up as 2005’s best buddy pic — damned if I can recall a funnier movie from last year, except the one with the middle-age virgin. Brosnan, not afraid to don cheerleading skirts and…
Charlie’s Angels: The Complete Third Season (Sony) Cyberteam in Akihabara: Complete Collection (ADV) Eastern Horror Double Feature: Satan’s Slave and Corpse Master (Brentwood) King of the Cage: The Superstars of KOTC (Brentwood) The Kinks: The Live Broadcasts (Classic Rock Legends) The Legend of Prince Valiant: The Complete Series, Volume One…
For an industry in decline, print journalism has done a fashion publicist’s job of staying in vogue, particularly among the more stylish of career-seeking college grads. Never mind telling these BlackBerry-toting eager beavers that even an unpaid gig in the field is as rare as a winning lottery ticket: The…
After all that, just this? After all the anticipation, all the hype, all the product available on toy-store shelves and kiddie sections at bookstores, after all the promise that this would be the most super of Superman movies, all we get is just this this remake? Because let’s first call…
Vondie Curtis Hall’s irrational and contradictory crime thriller stars Tyrese Gibson (2 Fast 2 Furious) as an indestructible ex-con who, with a sullen but sizzling L.A. streetwalker (Meagan Good), sets out to find his kidnapped son. They raise ransom money on a well-publicized 24-hour crime spree and put two rival…
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…
Commander in Chief: 2-Disc Inaugural Edition Part 1 (Disney) The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection (MPI) Cow Belles (Disney) Danger After Dark (TLA) Evil (Magnolia) Is It Really So Strange? (Frameline) Failure to Launch (Paramount) Family Affair: Season One (MPI) Fear Factor: The First Season (Universal) Imagine Me & You (Fox)…
Given that John Singleton directed the second movie in The Fast and the Furious franchise, it makes a perverse kind of sense that Justin Lin would follow. Just as Singleton did with Boyz N the Hood, young Lin quickly made a name for himself with a powerful breakthrough film that…
