Among documentary muckrakers, Kirby Dick may not be as righteously indignant as Michael Moore or as brilliantly droll as Nick Broomfield. But say this for the maker and star of This Film Is Not Yet Rated: He’s not afraid to soil his hands to get the story. Rummaging through the…
If Superman Returns attempted to resurrect the Man of Steel as mythic hero, the season’s other Superman movie wants to disabuse us of any such childish illusions. Glamorously adult, Hollywoodland purports to part the veil on the circumstances by which George Reeves, the actor who embodied the superhero on ’50s…
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s an entire generation of middle-aged men who refuse to believe that the actor who played the original Superman could have killed himself! Okay, so maybe they’re not up in the sky. Mostly they’re on the Internet, swapping conspiracy…
A number of pregnant mysteries arise with the new remake of Robin Hardy’s 1973 cult-remembered genre work The Wicker Man — namely, what’s in this kind of malarkey for gender-combat provocateur Neil LaBute, and why was such a high-profile film tossed into theaters last Friday without letting critics see it…
By the time Trust the Man opens this weekend, it will have been nearly a year since it debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it was picked up for distribution by Fox Searchlight. Forget that it’s a year old; this thing tastes a good decade past its expiration…
I hate dogs. It’s one of several things about me that people point to as proof that I’m not a human being. But I have my reasons for recoiling at the sight (and smell!) of nearly every canine I’ve ever come across. Like the fact that an especially large, brutish…
One of the weakest and most ridiculous aspects of popular culture is its narcissistic now-ness. There’s often no then or later, and without past experience or the messy knowledge of life, modern entertainment media often seem poached in a neurotic teenage brainpan, entranced with their own ignorant tunnel vision. A…
Low, which is to say no, expectations can be a wonderful thing; expect nothing, and maybe you’ll get that little outta-nowhere sumpin-sumpin that turns an otherwise unfulfilling occurrence into a vaguely rewarding experience. It’s not like Invincible boasts the most promising of credentials: a first-time filmmaker (Ericson Core, the cinematographer…
If, at this remove, we can imagine Vienna in the late 1890s, we behold a great imperial capital in ferment. Gustav Mahler is not only reinventing the harmonic structure of serious music, he is getting his head seriously shrunk by Sigmund Freud. Arnold Schoenberg takes painting lessons from the eroticist…
Snakes on a Plane represents the ideal of contemporary major-studio filmmaking — which is to say, major-studio marketing. Who needs word-of-mouth screenings or critics when you can sell the four-word pitch as written on a napkin? It points to a future that takes all the guesswork out of moviegoing. A…
The grainy images are both utterly mundane and deeply disturbing. They flicker past silently; the soundtrack to this short movie is long lost. Yet there’s a soundless wail of horror behind these simple scenes — of a group of men erecting a low, tarpaper-covered building; a woman hanging laundry; a…
Jason Lethcoe’s book Amazing Adventures From Zoom’s Academy doesn’t particularly wow the reader with its prose, but the concept is solid — basically, Harry Potter with superheroes rather than wizards. The heroine, Summer Jones, is an awkward 13-year-old tomboy with a goofy father named Jasper who likes to tinker with…
World Trade Center is about just that — the attacks on, and the collapse of, the twin towers on September 11, 2001. But 45 minutes in, a viewer might easily forget the movie is set during that nightmarish day. There is little talk of terrorism and scant suggestion that a…
Like the shambling VW van its hapless characters steer from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach, Little Miss Sunshine is a rickety vehicle that travels mostly downhill. How this antic extended sitcom from first-time feature makers Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris left Sundance with an eight-figure deal and reams of enthralled press…
Snort a few lines of Fame, screen Save the Last Dance a couple of times, and channel what you’ve learned through the bad-ass pose of a second-rate Eminem and you get Step Up, a dance romance with the originality of a paint-by-numbers set. First-time director Anne “Mama” Fletcher, the choreographer…
Countless are the creative souls who struggled with mental illness, as are the novels and films dedicated to them. Again and again, we’ve encountered artists both inspired and undermined by their madness, whose torment and tumult produce works of beauty and depth. So can a documentary about a singer-songwriter and…
There is no modern-day antecedent to the movies Will Ferrell makes with writer-director Adam McKay, with whom Ferrell collaborated during their tenure at Saturday Night Live only a few years ago. To compare their offerings, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and the new Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky…
What’s the difference between a good liar and a good storyteller? The answer, or the lack of an answer, is a mystery at the heart of The Night Listener, a muted psychological thriller adapted from the Armistead Maupin novel. A writer’s elaborate what-if scenario extrapolated from an anecdote, it’s presented…
Monster’s Ball producer Lee Daniels makes his directorial debut with Shadowboxer, and it couldn’t be clearer that he’s trying to follow his previous formula for success. Oscar-caliber actors? Check. Interracial sex? Plenty. A violent demise or two, all in the service of character development? Oh yes. But Daniels maybe could…
It seldom fails. Every year, we’ll get a movie that doesn’t necessarily have a remarkable plot or director, but does feature an aging master (or mistress) thespian from the U.K., whom one might assume is an automatic shoo-in for an award nomination, ensuring eternal recognition for the movie at hand…
It’s no secret that documentaries have finally gained some currency in the American media. With the help of Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock, and a very cold bunch of penguins, docs have increased their audiences by railing against injustices, exposing political and corporate malfeasance, and inviting us into hidden worlds. Naked…
The old Lucas/Spielberg stunt of turning B-movie peekaboos into E-ticket thrill rides remains the industry standard — to the virtual exclusion of other multiplex fare, particularly when school’s out. But as not every kid who remade Raiders in Super 8 either gave up the dream or morphed into Michael Bay,…
