Those familiar with the films of David Gordon Green (George Washington, All the Real Girls) likely have one big question about his latest feature, Undertow: Is there more of a story this time? The answer is . . . sort of. Green, who favors meditative, meandering portraits, and is often…
When was the last time you saw Paul Giamatti? And when the film ended, did you realize how much you would miss him? It was just last year that Giamatti played the hilariously beleaguered Harvey Pekar in American Splendor, a role that he occupied with slumped, head-hanging perfection. Yet as…
If you aren’t familiar with Bishop T.D. Jakes, it could only mean you’re white or, like much of the entertainment industry and American media, generally clueless about the lives of this country’s tens of millions of evangelical Christians. To black Americans, Jakes is an icon — a preaching, teaching, entrepreneurial…
Ray, director Taylor Hackford’s 15-years-in-the-making biography of Ray Charles, begins as you might hope: with 1959’s “What’d I Say (Part 1)” pulsing on the soundtrack, the organ’s low moans building toward that familiar, funky frenzy. It almost serves as an early climax, a bracing thrill served up before a word…
It takes mighty big stones to name your horror movie Saw, knowing full well that that’s popular fan-slang for Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a movie worshiped by gorehounds worldwide. When you take that name for your own, you had damn well better deliver a memorable, worthy contender to…
Even before the movie begins, as the New Line logo is still coalescing on a dark screen, a man speaks on the soundtrack. He’s talking about reincarnation and about what he would do if his wife, named Anna, were to die and return as a bird insisting it was indeed…
There is a phrase bandied about that other film industry — “gay for pay” — that means exactly what it says. The queer thing is, this switch-hitting work ethic obviously applies to the “straight” industry as well, since actors not infrequently launch their careers, or rev ’em up, by playing…
The Grudge bears the imprimatur of Sam Raimi, but alas, neither his sense of fun nor his smarts. The wunderkind director behind the Spider-Man and Evil Dead franchises has followed in the path of Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver with their Dark Castle releases, launching his own lucrative spook factory,…
Maybe you’re one of the many who went to see Hero and were blown away. The historical Chinese setting, the attention to detail, the fights — who could blame you? There’s a better than average chance you may be thinking to yourself right now, “Self, that flick totally kicked ass…
If the tiny Quebecois island of Sainte Marie-La Mauderne is any indication, Michael Moore was right: Canadians do not lock their front doors (an assertion he made in Bowling for Columbine). Of course, the 125 residents of this tiny fictional community have no need to: Murders are unheard of here,…
A parody of Gerry Anderson marionette shows (like Thunderbirds and Joe 90), Jerry Bruckheimer action movies, and the ’80s cartoon/toy line M.A.S.K. , Team America: World Police boils all those ingredients down to their essences, starting with the theme song “Americaaa . . . Fuck yeah!” (imagine it scored like…
It would be so easy to titter and scoff at Shall We Dance?, a Miramaxed-out version of the 1996 Japanese film of the same name, which told of a bored businessman who is reinvigorated after a few dozen dance lessons. This version, with its cast of glow-in-the-dark movie stars and…
The first exceptional drama of 2004 is here, and it only took, what, six months? Perhaps unsurprisingly, The Mother comes from British writer Hanif Kureishi, who penned the gritty, South Asian-in-London marvels My Beautiful Laundrette and My Son the Fanatic. On the other hand, its director is Roger Michell, lately…
Essayist. Playwright. Radio personality. Librettist. Actor. Novelist. Now, with Bright Young Things, the inimitable British wit Stephen Fry debuts as feature screenwriter and director. Best known here in the colonies either as Jeeves (opposite Hugh Laurie) in Jeeves and Wooster, or as Peter in Peter’s Friends, or possibly as Oscar…
Imagine it’s a weekday morning, and you’re at a trade conference in Finland. You’re sleepy, maybe a little jet-lagged, as you prepare for the next speaker. He’s a representative from the World Trade Organization, and he has come to talk to you about “The Future of Textiles.” First, he presents…
There are at least three movies contained within the covers of H.G. Bissinger’s best-selling 1990 nonfiction book Friday Night Lights. One is concerned with the socioeconomic life of a small west Texas town built on the wobbly foundations of oil and racism and the out-of-whack worship of a high school…
Maybe it’s the mark of a great film that it can affect an audience member even when he sleeps through the entire thing. Such was the case with my father at a recent preview of David O. Russell’s I ♥ Huckabees, a philosophy lecture masquerading as a comedy in which…
Tweener fave Hilary Duff effortlessly maintains her wholesome image in Raise Your Voice, a coming-of-age drama (what else would you expect when the star is all of 16?) that is being marketed as a kind of updated Fame. Whereas director Alan Parker’s popular 1980 musical was set at Manhattan’s prestigious…
Shark Tale is an animated film, though after you see it you might wonder whether the term is intended as oxymoronic. Put simply, it has no life in it at all. Not even the kids roped into an afternoon preview screening seemed terribly interested. Perhaps they’ve grown tired of computer-made…
Revolutionary idolatry is an odd business. Just ask unruly pop singer Stew, of the unruly pop group the Negro Problem. On his Naked Dutch Painter album, the melodic rebel dares to challenge a very sacred image. “Don’t you wish there was, like, another picture of Che Guevara?” he inquires. “Like,…
It was only a matter of time before Hollywood capitalized on the sympathy and admiration that have enveloped the nation’s firefighters since 9/11, and here we are. Jay Russell’s action-packed, flame-broiled Ladder 49 is an all-out valentine to the firehouse fraternity that might never have gotten to the screen were…
Say hello to a pop cinema masterpiece. This new Japanese import opens with a massive thud not unlike Godzilla’s footfall, and its cinematic legacy stretches back almost as far. It’s got crafty samurai action, hilarious bits of business, insightful observations into the human condition, and geysers of kitschy computer-generated blood…
