Fast Food Nation, directed by Richard Linklater from Eric Schlosser’s 2001 best-selling exposé of the McDonald’s conspiracy, is an anti-commercial. It’s designed to kill desire and deprogram the viewer’s appetite. Linklater — who, along with Steven Soderbergh and Gus Van Sant, has staked out a particular outpost on the indie-studio…
By all rights, 2002’s Die Another Day should have been and could have been the final James Bond film. It was packaged like a cynical, weary best-of concert coughed up by an aging dinosaur, offering copious nods to the franchise’s past without bothering to offer any new material of consequence…
Having animals act like humans on film is a storytelling device as old as time, so maybe it’s a little unfair to get tired of it just now. But back in the day, wise old owls didn’t sing “Boogie Wonderland.” And whereas we used to give animals human souls, now…
If I lie very still and focus all my attention on the tiny water stain on the ceiling above my bed, I’m able to forget the dream for minutes at a time. The dream — a nightmare, really — has been with me since this afternoon, when I awakened from…
Forbidden Planet (Warner Bros.) Long available as faded discount product, Fred McLeod Wilcox’s 1956 masterpiece — the movie without which Star Trek, Star Wars, 2001, and, oh, Lost in Space wouldn’t exist — at last gets its proper due; this double-disc collection comes with everything but stardust and rocket fuel…
Final Fantasy is to role-playing games as the Yankees are to baseball. The series — now almost 20 years old — practically redefined the genre with Final Fantasy VII on the original PlayStation, the first console RPG that captured a mainstream audience in the States. But FF was a victim…
Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge: Originally commissioned by City Theatre in Pittsburgh and successfully presented during the 2002 holiday season, Christopher Durang’s profoundly irreverent play is a demented version of the perennial Dickens Christmas classic. This time, nasty old Ebenezer Scrooge finds that a visitation from three dead friends…
Brothers of the Head (IFC) Cary Grant: The Franchise Collection (Universal) CSI: The Complete Sixth Season (Paramount) Cream: Royal Albert Hall (Rhino) 49 Up (First Run) Friends: The Complete Series Collection (Warner Bros.) The Green Mile: Two-Disc Special Edition (Warner Bros.) Hate Crime (Image) He Changed Our World: Steve Irwin…
Throughout human history, wigs have benefited mankind. The ancient Egyptians donned them to shield their melons from the sunshine, France’s King Louis XIII hid his premature baldness with a hairpiece, and now Valley barflies can use them to score cheap alcohol during Wigger Wednesdays. The weird watering hole called Monkey…
DJ Big Latin is a punisher of the following: 1) dance floors, which are torn up when his wheels of steel are in motion; 2) uninitiated eardrums, when he spins eclectic reggaeton, cumbia, and merengue música; and 3) himself, because the dude’s demanding schedule includes weekly engagements at Macayo’s, Jackson’s…
Mother Nature is no pushover. Nudge gently and she’ll deliver food, fresh drinking water and fossil fuels. Take too much and she fights back with hurricanes, earthquakes and tidal waves, as the world has recently relearned. The impact of humanity on nature is the focus of “DeNatured,” a collaborative effort…
I admit it. I hate change. I balked when our local co-op, Gentle Strength, moved to accommodate the light rail, and I was furious when expensive lofts began to dominate my once-affordable neighborhood. But I know that it isn’t all bad. My beloved Gentle Strength ended up in a more…
Once an actor gets big enough to take whatever kind of role he wants, it makes sense that the biggest stretch imaginable, given his current situation, is the part of a powerless man with no control over the world around him. Call it a “nice” movie — a vehicle designed…
Pity Max Skinner, emasculated over his lamb chops. On a gray afternoon, at London’s hot spot du jour, his gloating superior unveils a plot to poach his most lucrative client, divesting him of a six-figure bonus (pounds sterling) in the process. Fuck it. The bummed-out bond trader hands in a…
Manufactured history guarantees a manufactured controversy: Gabriel Range’s Death of a President, which docudramatizes the 2007 assassination of George W. Bush, has been preceded by a long, raucous fanfare. Excoriated on talk radio, damned as a snuff film, banned by two theater chains, the British production has also garnered celebrity…
Time perhaps scrambling it’s for Alejandro González Iñárritu to stop his narratives. After making an exciting debut in 2000 with Amores Perros — a movie whose gimmicky, Tarantino-esque tinkering with structure seemed fresher en español and grounded in gritty Mexico City location shooting — González Iñárritu apparently decided to devote…
Ed Harris as Beethoven? The man who would be John Glenn is hardly the most instinctive choice to play the legendary composer, especially if you recall Gary Oldman’s performance in Immortal Beloved. Oldman embodied the maestro. Still, as Jackson Pollock in Pollock, Harris did bring to life a tormented, alcoholic…
Of all the hundreds of pedophile priests to be flushed out of the woodwork in recent Catholic Church history, Father Oliver O’Grady has to be one of the most harmless looking, and the most sinister. Wispy, unremarkable and accommodating, with an ingratiating half-smile playing permanently about his thin lips, Father…
In the gangsta pantheon, nobody gets more respect than Tony Montana. Consider all the homages: Not one, but two rappers have named themselves after Montana (Scarface of the Geto Boys and Tony Yayo of G-Unit), and Nas borrowed Montana’s slogan for his breakout hit, “The World Is Yours.” Indeed, the…
The Junky’s Christmas (Koch) They just aren’t cranking out clay animation Christmas specials like they used to, which makes this a welcome one. Nicer still, it’s got heroin! A mixture of stop motion with a little puppetry and live-action shots of William Burroughs (who may himself have been a Muppet),…
Jessica Joslin and Nissa Kubly at Lisa Sette Gallery: The Dadaists may have pioneered found-object assemblage, but artist Jessica Joslin’s zoomorphic sculptures constructed from animal bones and metal hardware venture beyond their grasp of the craft. Joslin is particularly adept at capturing the natural kinesthetics of mammals. Though merely a…
Anna Karenina (Kino) Arrested Development: Seasons One-Three (Fox) The Best of the Scripps National Spelling Bee (ESPN) Beverly Hills 90210: The Complete First Season (Paramount) Cinema Paradiso (Weinstein) The Fallen Idol (Criterion) Freak Out (Anchor Bay) Jag: The Complete Second Season (Paramount) The James Bond Collection: Volumes One and Two…
