If nothing else, give French actor Yvan Attal credit for his faith in domestic bliss. At a time when matrimony has a shorter life span than mayonnaise, Attal has sought to mingle the joys and traumas of his own marriage (to actress Charlotte Gainsbourg) with his piquant views on the…
Not much has changed in the ten years since Mike Myers used the Wayne’s World movies as a personal launch pad, and then tipped his James Bond-spoofing Austin Powers hand when he became popular enough to reap the rewards. Now those spy-movie sendups — with the major characters played by…
There are a few dubious claims regarding popular perceptions of the life and death of Napoleon Bonaparte. Despite the legend, he wasn’t — at five-foot-six — particularly short. He was also more than just the sturdy product of military training in Brienne and Paris, considering that his Corsican mother adamantly…
Of all the A-list men playing dedicated authority figures, Star Wars alums Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson remain among the most amusing and pleasing, which is why K-19: The Widowmaker glides along engagingly rather than sinking. In many ways, it’s just another cramped, dank submarine movie — bells, whistles, leaks,…
If you don’t object to the occasional metaphor coming from the barrel of a gun, you’ll probably find Sam Mendes’s quirky period gangster movie Road to Perdition intellectually stimulating, emotionally complex and gorgeous to look at. This is the gifted British stage director’s first film since his startling and provocative…
It’s daunting to hear that John Sayles’s new film, Sunshine State, is almost two and a half hours long and mostly consists of calm conversations. But don’t be deterred, or you’ll miss out on a study of character, class and changing times that puts Robert Altman’s stodgy Gosford Park to…
Most summer movies about the pain of growing up emerge from the same primordial ooze — lots of teenage anxiety mixed with two or three unruly hormones in the stickum of comic discontent. What a relief, then, to find a coming-of-age film that avoids the cartoonish cliches and sneering humor…
Like a jawbreaker that changes color every few seconds, MIIB: Men in Black II delivers a quick buzz, lots of stuff to look at and a totally non-nutritious joy that can only be attained with the aid of artificial flavoring and yellow dye #5. In a nutshell, it’s the perfect…
It has been eighty years since the adventurous son of a Michigan iron miner trained a silent-movie camera on the everyday life of an “Eskimo” family in the Canadian Arctic and virtually invented documentary filmmaking. Through the decades, Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North has attracted its share of criticism…
Naked emotion is a tricky thing to sell in motion pictures, especially in semi-autobiographical ones about confused mama’s boys gradually learning that life exists beyond the control of their lens. Back in 1988, Giuseppe Tornatore challenged himself thus with Cinema Paradiso and upped the ante, adding his unabashed sentimentality to…
Steven Spielberg just might turn into a great director — if only he’d stop sabotaging his movies. For the second time in as many films, he demolishes his product with a third act that renders all that’s come before it void. It’s as though Minority Report, set in a near…
If it’s possible for a film to be simultaneously ambitious and banal, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys does it. There’s little here we haven’t seen repeatedly in some form or another — growing up Catholic is popular fodder for filmmakers, as is growing up in the American South, usually…
The “one thing” at the heart of Jill Sprecher’s 13 Conversations About One Thing may not have one name. But as you wend your way through this intricate meditation on urban solitude and the nature of fate, you’ll likely discover for yourself whether it’s called happiness, hope, domestic tranquility or…
At first, the swaggering neo-Nazi skinhead played to scary effect by Ryan Gosling in The Believer seems to hail from the same cesspool that spit up Russell Crowe’s Neanderthal in Romper Stomper and Edward Norton’s deep-thinking thug in American History X. Gosling’s Danny Balint is a belligerent New York street…
It’s no surprise that the Louisiana-born novelist Rebecca Wells has seen her wildly popular books translated into eighteen languages, with no less than six million copies in print. She’s no deep-thinking stylist, but she has an unfailing gift for injecting Southern sentimentality, low-grade neurosis and mischievous charm into stories that…
So this is what it’s come to: another week, another terrorist-with-a-suitcase-nuke movie. Last Friday, it was up to Ben Affleck to save the world from nuclear annihilation — an unsavory proposition. He succeeded, but not before the Super Bowl disappeared in an atomic flash. This Friday, it’s Chris Rock’s turn…
Victor Hugo called grief “a divine and terrible radiance which transfigures the wretched,” and anyone who has ever found himself touching the sleeve of his father’s favorite jacket on the day after his funeral, or gazing at the toy-strewn floor in a dead child’s playroom, or surveying the carnage on…
The plot of The Importance of Being Earnest, for those unfortunates who’ve missed it these past 109 years, goes something like this: A dandified London wastrel by the name of Algernon (Algy) Moncrieff (portrayed in this adaptation by Rupert Everett) welcomes into his chambers his friend and ally, Ernest (Colin…
The bad news for Memento fans is that Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia is far less complex and challenging in form than the backwards-edited art-house hit that sparked as much disdain as devotion from moviegoers last year. The good news for Memento-haters is that Insomnia is far less complex and challenging in…
It’s very tempting to not just dismiss Enough, the latest bill-paying gig by Michael Apted (Enigma), starring Jennifer Lopez, but shred it altogether. Ms. Lopez hasn’t exactly added to her acting credibility with a string of showy, glamorous roles in such mediocre films as The Wedding Planner and Angel Eyes…
Three years have passed since Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace thrilled some and infuriated others, yet the schism in the Church of Lucas remains. Die-hard supporters still refuse to admit that Episode I has some truly awful acting and dialogue, as well as borderline-offensive caricatures; and dyed-in-the-wool detractors…
It’s appropriate that Universal would debut About a Boy against the latest installment in the George Lucas juggernaut. Certainly it’s daring, which is the last thing one ever expected to say about a film starring Hugh Grant. Consider: Attack of the Clones is an enormous movie that signifies nothing outside…
