Occasionally I can be convinced it’s the singer, not the song. I’ve no love for Britney Spears’ “Baby… One More Time,” but can’t get enough of Brit band Travis’ laconic redo of said iconic single, which squeezes out the then-teen temptress’ toxic sugar ’til it’s just a bittersweet lament. On…
Talk about tough acts to follow: The original 1999 Matrix, a critical and commercial smash, came almost as a revelation out of nowhere — if the combination of Joel Silver, Warner Bros., and roughly 60 million bucks qualifies as “nowhere.” After more than four years, The Matrix Reloaded — the…
Ross Hunter, dead seven years, hasn’t been this alive at the movies since the 1950s and ’60s, when he produced some of the weepiest melodramas and cheeriest romantic comedies ever to barely stick to the screen. His ghost has been wandering up and down the aisles ever since Don Simpson…
It’s usually right about this time of year that film critics, especially those of advancing years, begin to feel a slow chill of dread creep up their spines. Suppressing that urge, they generally find it quickly replaced by a sudden rush of sneering condescension and smug mock-martyrdom. “Oh no!” they…
Neil LaBute is back to his old self again, and the cinematic world is a better place for it. Honestly, what was he thinking when he made Possession? Did the charges of misogyny, still lingering from In the Company of Men and Your Friends & Neighbors, get to him so…
Long ago Eddie Murphy had grown tired of Eddie Murphy parts: the fast-talking high-jiver, the preening put-on. Even before he began parodying himself in Bowfinger and Showtime and I Spy, the latter two perhaps accidentally, he accepted high-paying roles in low-rent movies that neutered and humiliated the character he had…
In last year’s Showtime movie turned theatrical release The Believer, audiences were introduced to a hate-filled young skinhead who seemed surprisingly knowledgeable about the arcana of the Jewish people he loathed so much. Turned out he was Jewish, and ultimately had to come to grips with his Torah upbringing and…
Just to admit this up front, my ideal concept of musical comedy involves Bryan Adams and Dave Matthews garroting each other onstage with their own damnable guitar strings. Nonetheless, even viewers with a more centrist appreciation of the genre may feel disappointed by this friendly new folk music curiosity called…
At some fast-approaching point in pop culture evolution, we’re due to hit Total Outsider Saturation, wherein everybody is an outsider and therefore there is no longer an outside. In the fleeting meantime, we have scintillating reminders of the struggle like X2: X-Men United, the latest bid from comic book land…
Filmmaker Terry Gilliam is no stranger to fiasco. After all, this is the human dynamo who saw 1989’s inventive (if sometimes incoherent) The Adventures of Baron Munchausen through a series of artistic and financial crises that would have landed most people in an asylum. But Gilliam’s encounter with the tale-spinning…
It is rare to find a film that defies one’s expectations as sweetly and satisfyingly as this coming-of-age comedy-drama from first-time feature writer-director Peter Sollett. The surprise isn’t in the plot — that would be too easy — but, rather, in the extraordinarily subtle and convincing ways the characters grow…
“I’m guessing this is pretty much the point of this movie, the reason it was made,” says Bob Hoag, sounding disappointed. The lead singer of Go Reflex and all-around impresario behind the thriving Mesa rock music scene is sitting in a theater at Superstition Springs Center. On screen, meanwhile, two…
In nature, living things prey upon each other all the time. Humanity, on the other hand, has a choice. It’s flouting this choice that turns on director Gaspar Noé. In his latest project, Irréversible, he basically swipes Christopher Nolan’s backward-narrative structure from Memento to tell a lurid tale of rape…
In Confidence, Edward Burns plays Jake Vig, a con artist whose body temperature runs a few degrees below normal. Even when things seem to go bad, when a would-be partner betrays him with a phone call or a seedy-greedy Dustin Hoffman lays maybe-gay and grubby paws all over him, Burns…
Imagine a large, dead Saint Bernard with its bones removed. Then visualize a hefty bellows inserted into it from behind, with a gorilla hopping up and down on it, causing the huge dog’s baglike corpse to twitch spasmodically, wheeze and croak. Voilà, this is today’s Nick Nolte. What’s amazing is…
Waiting for a limo to pull up and an entourage to spill out, you can’t help wondering how many tickets New Times is going to have to buy to get everyone inside for the movie. Even at Centerpoint’s matinee rate, this could get ugly. But this isn’t L.A. Just because…
Better Luck Tomorrow, about Asian-American high schoolers making good grades but up to no good, arrives with the furor (albeit minor — a rumpus, perhaps?) attendant a Sundance Film Fest fave. In this case, Internet movie-gossip hounds bark about changes made to the movie after MTV Films and Paramount Classics…
Bulletproof Monk may not be high art, but at least it has the distinction of being the first Hollywood production that gives an inkling of why Chow Yun-Fat became Hong Kong’s greatest leading man some 17 years ago, after his irresistible supporting performance in John Woo’s breakthrough, A Better Tomorrow…
When you see a glamorous movie star like Kate Beckinsale tying her hair back and wearing glasses, it’s sure-fire shorthand that she’s an uptight soul. But just in case you aren’t familiar with all the usual signals, writer-director Lisa Cholodenko gives a couple of even more obvious ones in her…
Among Anger Management’s copious flaws is the fact that its premise doesn’t wash. Adam Sandler’s Dave Buznik, a designer of catalogues for overweight-cat clothing, isn’t really angry at all; he’s just a self-loathing, introverted mess whose insecurities date back to a crowded street party in Brooklyn circa 1978, when he…
In 1997’s The Apostle, Robert Duvall took on a subject near and dear to his heart: Southern Pentecostal preachers. No one would make the film for him, so he went ahead and directed it himself, garnering much acclaim from media both secular and religious for his warts-and-all portrayal of a…
Director David Cronenberg has led his loyal fans down some pretty spooky corridors, including the telepathic netherworld of Scanners, the violent sibling rivalry of twin gynecologists in love with the same woman (Dead Ringers) and the drug-haunted imagination of William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch). So it comes as no surprise…
