Christmastime is here, but for the first time, Charlie Brown’s father will not be around to watch his depressed, round-headed child celebrate the holiday. He will not be in front of the television next week to watch his little boy seek psychiatric help from a nickel-grubbing girl who diagnoses her…
There’s bound to be a philosopher somewhere who has offered the opinion that banality, if marketed well enough, becomes the model of success. Given the spew of mediocrity that’s hyped in the media, that theory is a reasonable assumption. But there’s a corollary that’s worse. If it hasn’t been hyped,…
Documentaries have been out of fashion in the film world, though exactly what a documentary is remains debatable, at least in Hollywood circles. (Roger and Me and The Thin Blue Line did not qualify for Oscar consideration, according to the rules.) Whatever you want to call these offerings from the…
About halfway through the megabudget mountain climbing adventure Vertical Limit, even the most rugged, thrill-hungry fans of disaster movies may find themselves going numb. Not from the howling weather on the icy face of K2, in the Himalayas, where the action supposedly takes place. Not from oxygen deprivation. Not even…
Happy hooker? Femme fatale? Damsel in distress? The movies have always been fascinated with prostitutes. Most films generally portray them as resourceful, often wise and amusing, and somewhat scary, using sex in ways that both amaze and titillate (from Blue Angel on through Mighty Aphrodite). The sordid aspects of the…
If the concept of that dubious celebrity Ben Affleck romping in a water park with cinematic darling Gwyneth Paltrow and two adorable moppets does not inspire in you spasms of dizziness and nausea, then you may find plenty to tolerate in this new romantic dramedy Bounce, from writer/director Don Roos…
In 102 Dalmatians, a new brood of puppies is born, one of which, Oddball, doesn’t develop spots. The resulting feelings of inadequacy are such that the poor thing runs away from home and hides in a cave, gets bitten by a bat, and turns into a slavering mad dog. Cruella…
Unbreakable is such a quiet film that whenever a character speaks above a whisper, it sounds like the shattering of glass in a monastery. It’s also a terribly sad movie; almost no one cracks a smile or a joke, and everyone wears the look of someone who’s just spent the…
So many elements make up a boyhood, from joyful laughter and games, to purloined porno mags and pointless aggression, to the scary realization that something vital is slipping away, something that may never be reclaimed. Naturally nostalgic reflections on this magical time form the basis of countless films, with two…
The current release of French director Nicole Garcia’s Place Vendôme, which was nominated for eleven César Awards when it debuted in France two years ago, is yet another sign that the dropoff in French imports that has plagued U.S. screens in recent years is reversing. This is roughly the fifteenth…
The soon-to-be-talked-about sensations in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream include three or four flashing near-subliminal montages that combine an eye’s iris and dilating pupil, an extreme closeup of heroin cooking in a teaspoon, and a sucking hypodermic needle; a surpassingly frightening sequence in which Ellen Burstyn, in the midst…
At first glance Paragraph 175, a documentary by Robert Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, doesn’t appear to be must-see moviegoing. Epstein and Friedman are well-known award-winning documentarians with a string of notable successes: The Celluloid Closet, Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, and The Life and Times of Harvey Milk among…
No one likes to be seen as the roadblock to a revolution. The unfortunate soul–or the dumb bastard–who chooses to impede progress is likely to be mowed down by those charging toward tomorrow. He will become a thing to be wiped off the shoes of those who march, march, march…
November may mean Thanksgiving to most of you, but in the film biz, it means a rush of “serious” films trying to gouge an impression into the short memories of Oscar voters. This shouldn’t be a bad thing, but since the relationship between “Oscar” and “actual interesting filmmaking” is nearly…
Canadian filmmaker Denys Arcand (Jesus of Montreal) isn’t the first guy to skewer what Tennessee Williams called “the bitch-goddess of success.” Or to lay bare the absurdity of Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame. Or to otherwise annihilate celebrity worship. But in his observant, swiftly paced Stardom Arcand does it…
Gopher. Explosives. Gopher … explosives. Gopher! Explosives! There. Now you know exactly what was running through this critic’s mind during The Legend of Bagger Vance, the impeccably aimed new tranquilizer dart from Hollywood’s Mr. Honeydrip, Robert Redford. Of course it’s really not fair to compare this meditative drama to that…
Let’s get this out of the way right now, because so many of you will find this hard to believe: Yes, Mad magazine still exists. It is still being published 48 years after it was created by Harvey Kurtzman and William Gaines, neither of whom lived long enough to see…
The opening credits of Charlie’s Angels hint at a movie that never appears in the film’s expurgated 94 minutes; the tease is too soon rendered a disappointment. A Mission: Impossible-style prelude suggests a live-action cartoon as directed by Robert Altman; a camera stalks the aisles of a jumbo jet, capturing…
To put it mildly, it is uncomfortable and embarrassing to have one’s cynical ass whipped by a huge hulking Hallmark card, and this is exactly the sensation one takes away from Mimi Leder’s Pay It Forward. Not that the near-total emotional submission isn’t preceded by a knock-down drag-out battle for…
Renowned Brazilian director Carlos Diegues has attempted to make a movie worthy of the music that has provided his nation with a soundtrack for the past century. But Diegues’s samba-inspired Orfeu doesn’t prove a very good dance partner. Like the floor charts sold to North Americans eager to learn the…
Before others could reject him, Michael Chabon had convinced himself no one wanted to read an epic novel about comic-book creators, mythical Jewish monsters called golems, New York in the 1930s, daring escapes from Lithuania, Nazis, and the Empire State Building’s elevator system. He wanted to write the book–desperately, one…
It’s Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival time again: Time for more than 100 movies from dozens of countries. Time for screenings at locations from southern Palm Beach County to Miami-Dade’s South Beach. Time for foreign and domestic features, documentaries, and short subjects, along with the affiliated parties and other festivities…
