It can’t be easy making films about war. It’s so inherently dramatic that, as a setting for art, it’s overdetermined; it drips with meaning even before the first scenes are set. And so much has been said already: War is hell. War is noble. War is surreal. War is absurd,…
Screenwriter Robert Towne has spent decades trying to adapt for the big screen John Fante’s 1939 novel about a struggling writer named Arturo Bandini, and Towne’s affection for the material and its maker is plainly evident here. He is faithful to the novel to a point, but also more forgiving…
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 Adventures of Brer Rabbit (Universal) Batman Beyond: The Complete First Season (Warner Bros.) The Billy Wilder DVD Collection (Paramount) Bukowski: Born into This (Magnolia) The Busby Berkeley Collection (Warner Bros.) Capote (Sony) Chicken Little (Buena Vista) Crackheads Gone Wild (Xtreme Films) Dear Wendy (Fox Lorber) Derailed (Weinstein Co.) Dreamer:…
The posters for V for Vendetta read “An uncompromising vision of the future from the creators of The Matrix trilogy.” Uncompromising? It simply isn’t possible to translate Alan Moore’s multilayer comic-book masterpiece into a two-hour movie without making cuts that oversimplify, and it’s certainly not feasible to expect producer Joel…
Hollywood is a sucker for cross-dressing. When the American Film Institute chose the 100 greatest comedies of all time, a pair of drag films — Some Like It Hot and Tootsie — earned the top two slots. From Operation Petticoat to White Chicks, slapping falsies on a dude is the…
Through the Fire (Disney) He’s averaging just nine points in his second season for the Portland Trail Blazers, but considering where he came from and what he’s overcome, Sebastian Telfair is doing just fine, thank you. Jonathan Hock’s fascinating documentary takes us back to the young New York basketball legend’s…
All Dogs Go to Heaven/All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 (MGM) American Psycho (Lions Gate) Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers (Warner Bros.) Basic Instinct: Ultimate Edition (Lions Gate) Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo — The Little Black Book Edition (Disney) A Fish Called Wanda (MGM) Get Shorty/Be Cool (MGM)…
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…
If French writer André Malraux was correct when he claimed that “all art is a revolt against man’s fate,” the most horrific events in human history can give rise, incongruously, to images of soul-searing beauty. How else to explain the stunning black-and-white images that fill Fateless, the story of a…
This is — and isn’t — an adaptation of Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. The eighteenth-century novel, described by Steve Coogan in the film itself as “a postmodern classic written before there was any modern to be post about,” is highly acclaimed but very seldom…
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…
The Best of the Best of The Electric Company (Shout Factory) Breaking News (Palm) Buster Keaton: 65th-Anniversary Collection (Sony) The Californians (Hart Sharp) Curse Death & Spirit (Asia Vision) The Easter Bunny Is Comin’ to Town (Warner Bros.) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Warner Bros.) The House on…
The mix is almost too much, but the mission is stunningly simple: The nation’s largest community college once again is producing one of the world’s most ambitious celebrations of the art of the motion picture, concentrating as much of the best as possible into what amounts to a glamorous orgy…
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…
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…
Annie Duke’s Conquering Online Poker (Big Vision) The Avengers: The Complete Emma Peel Megaset (A&E) Battle’s Poison Cloud (Cinema Libre) Bleak House (BBC Warner) Camara Oscura (Warner Bros.) Charmed: The Complete Fourth Season (Paramount) Death Tunnel (Sony) The Hobart Shakespeareans (Docurama) The Ice Harvest (MCA) The Lords of Discipline (Paramount)…
Tommy Lee Jones’s feature directorial debut is probably much as you’d expect: a blast of nostalgia that nonetheless accepts the realities of modernity, which isn’t surprising coming from an actor who’s getting up there in years but has found more fame as an old man than as a young’un. The…
If you’re a parent trying to teach your sullen teenagers that movies with subtitles aren’t all bad, try taking them to see Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor). Like Christophe Gang’s The Brotherhood of the Wolf or Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, this is a foreign-language film proving geekdom observes no…
The centerpiece of this preposterous bit of historical fiction is an opulent dinner party hosted by a wealthy Hungarian-Jewish industrialist and his elegant wife, for the purpose of signing over everything they own to the Nazis in return for their safe passage to Palestine. Among those tearing into the roast…
All the President’s Men (Warner Bros.) It’s no mystery why Warner Bros. chose to rerelease All the President’s Men now; at last we know how much — which is to say how little — Mark “Deep Throat” Felt really looked like Hal Holbrook. A new doc on former FBI second-in-command…
Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber (MCA) The Dick Cavett Show: Comic Legends (Shout Factory) Domino (New Line) Dorian Blues (TLA) First Descent (Universal) Left of the Dial (HBO) The Memory of a Killer (Sony) Midnight Cowboy: Two-Disc Collector’s Edition (MGM) Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Collector’s Edition (Sony)…
