At the opening of The Fog of War, the brilliant new documentary from director Errol Morris, we see a composed, sharply groomed, and middle-age Robert McNamara, preparing to brief the press on the Vietnam War. He asks two questions: First, if the chart he’s set up is visible and, second,…
When the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, consisting of twenty raw college men, beat the seemingly invincible, state-hardened Soviets and went on to win the gold medal at Lake Placid, the event was regarded, even in palm-lined Miami and iceless Honolulu, as the most amazing feat in U.S. Olympic history…
Valentin Childhood memories are part of filmmakers’ stock in trade, and many a director has based films on them — Fellini’s Amarcord, Boorman’s Hope and Glory, and Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso, to name but three. Alejandro Agresti’s Valentin (2002) continues this tradition with the tale of an owlish, bespectacled eight-year-old boy…
Bon Voyage Watching Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s big World War II drama Bon Voyage is like taking a vivid trip back to the middle of the Twentieth Century. This retro journey is not just because of the detailed Art Deco production design or the Nazis versus Free French storyline. The entire ethos…
There is a recent generation of American men who came of age too late for free love and wanton property-grabbing, and too early for postgrunge emotional wankery and info-age immediacy. Stuck on their iceberg, isolated by oceans from anything real like the original punk or Goth movements or Australia’s cinematic…
Behold a tale of true love (between a boy and a bicycle), of tireless courage (from a bitty grandmother with a club foot), and of a very shocking new definition of sexy (three wizened matriarchs who ravenously slurp down frogs). This is The Triplets of Belleville, an animated extravaganza of…
When aspiring independent filmmaker Justin Routt calls you up asking for help on his movie — free help, that is — don’t think that just because the industry outsider has no money, connections, or prior experience in moviemaking, he’ll be easily deterred. On the contrary. Routt has somehow got it…
Not a lot of people know this, but our word “actress” is derived from the Greek phrase strumpetos luckyos, meaning “prostitute who somehow landed an agent.” The reason that this etymological root remains largely unappreciated is that it is entirely fake, fabricated for the present purpose of irritating a lot…
William H. Macy’s plain-vanilla features and hangdog screen demeanor have served him well. Who could resist him as the clueless car dealer who hatched the disastrous kidnapping plot in Fargo, or as the distraught husband of a frisky porn star in Boogie Nights? A splendid character actor with a gift…
This year’s British assault on the Yank funnybone is a spirited, hard-trying farce called Calendar Girls, plucked straight from a 1999 news story and dolled up with all the heartwarming charm we’ve come to expect from recent films made by our former rulers. The film recounts the slightly naughty daring…
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last year — which often seems advantageous — you may have noticed that there’s a pugnacious air of defiance among today’s young women. Far be it from a film critic to attempt an essay on gender studies, but hey, look around:…
Anthony Minghella’s magnificent film version of the Civil War epic Cold Mountain has much more going for it than Hollywood grandeur. Beyond its striking set-pieces and gruesome battle scenes populated with thousands of extras, in addition to its movie-star glamour — Jude Law and Nicole Kidman are like beautiful pieces…
The dispute at the heart of House of Sand and Fog concerns the occupancy of a rundown little bungalow near the northern California coast. It’s not much of a place, really. And to get a glimpse of the Pacific you’d have to climb up to the roof and stand on…
For all of its inspired side trips down Imagination Lane (let’s call it that, because the “memories” of protagonist Edward Bloom are too majestic to be trusted and too affecting to be discounted), Big Fish is ultimately about one thing: the relationship between a son about to become a father…
You know how it’s often the ones we love whose flaws are most apparent? Well, when it comes to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, I am smitten. This film is a miracle, an extravaganza equal to its predecessors and in some ways more stunning. It…
The Mona Lisa Smile in question belongs, of course, to its star, Julia Roberts. Why? For no particular reason, actually. It’s just what Italian professor Bill Dunbar (Dominic West) calls her — Mona Lisa, perhaps because he’s an Italian professor possessing few points of reference outside the works of da…
Remember the Farrelly brothers? Makers of Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary? Known for crossing the line of good taste and making fun of the differently abled, but with sufficient sweetness that they could be forgiven? Kinda popular until Trey Parker and Matt Stone came along and one-upped…
To get the obvious out of the way first: Something’s Gotta Give is a film designed to appeal to older women, and it very likely will. Diane Keaton gives a good performance in it as a postmenopausal playwright who gets back in touch with her libido. The movie will probably…
In his career as a Hollywood action figure, Tom Cruise has been dressed in some pretty hip outfits — a macho fighter pilot’s sleek leather jacket, a NASCAR driver’s logo-speckled fire suit, assorted silken Armani sports jackets, even black cape and fangs. So it’s a bit unsettling to see the…
Honey is one of those movies you will see, swear you’ve seen before in several other guises and incarnations, then immediately forget you ever saw to begin with. Its story, about a would-be dancer trying to plot her escape from mean streets (or mean movie sets and back lots), has…
Michael Crichton seems pretty clever. The doctor-screenwriter-novelist digs odd history (Eaters of the Dead, a.k.a. The 13th Warrior), clashing cultures (Rising Sun), and cutting-edge biotechnology (Jurassic Park, and virtually his whole canon). His 1999 novel and its inevitable new movie adaptation, Timeline, both attempt to deliver all this and more,…
In director Ron Howard’s The Missing, Tommy Lee Jones’s Samuel Jones takes his place among the oldest archetypes in the Western genre — the white man who has lived among the Indians till he has at last become one. This plot device, used in Hombre and Nevada Smith and myriad…
