Apart from mass cultural annihilation, Beatniks, Hee Haw, some dumbass sports and the freak shows of Boulder, most pop-culture trends are not homegrown, but imported to America after prolonged cultivation overseas. Take that novelty food tofu, for instance, dubbed le curd du soy by uncredited Belgian sailors exploring China centuries…
The moody, feverish images that fill Running Free are so exquisite they almost make up for the film’s disastrous auditory misstep: the decision to cast Lukas Haas as the voice of Lucky, the chestnut foal that narrates this unusual adventure story. A cross between Nicholas Roeg’s Walkabout and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s…
“Industrial-strength boredom” is a vicious term to unload on anybody — friend, foe or former actress. Considering the lingering discomfort the epithet inspires, you should be wary of its impact, even around a seemingly invulnerable producer returning to the screen to melt our hearts in yet another variation on the…
Early on in Mission: Impossible 2 (or M:I-2, as the confident Paramount now calls it), hero Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) complains to his boss about his new assignment: “It’s going to be difficult. It’s not mission difficult, Mr. Hunt,” the boss icily replies, “It’s mission impossible. “Difficult’ should be a…
Brazilian moviemaker Bruno Barreto clearly has a taste for changing gears. In fact-based political thrillers like A Show of Force and Four Days in September, he casts himself as a second-string Costa-Gavras, rooting out state-sanctioned evil and the indiscretions of starry-eyed South American radicals. In his recent Hollywood period, Barreto…
Do not judge Shanghai Noon by its trailer, which serves as the very antithesis of advertising: It begs you to stay far away from any theater showing this film. Laden with dreary sight gags (a horse that stays by sitting…just like a dog) and woeful puns (“Your name is John…
Dinosaurs used to be cool. In 1969, if you had asked me what was the best movie ever made, my answer would likely have been The Valley of Gwangi, in which a group of cowboys in the Mexican desert find a gully full of leftover dinosaurs animated by Ray Harryhausen…
Road Trip makes American Pie look like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Fast Times like Animal House, and Animal House like Citizen Kane. It ranks (indeed, it is rank) among the most soul-deadening movies ever made; it has no pulse and seeks to steal yours with a cynical vengeance. Oh,…
Woody Allen is back on screen in Small Time Crooks, a bittersweet comedy that in many ways could have been lifted straight from the ’30s. For the most part, it’s Woody Allen Lite — but that’s not a bad thing. While you don’t want to penalize Allen for his serious…
When stars get popular enough (or win enough Oscars), they get to call their own shots. Thus we have The Big Kahuna, the debut release of Kevin Spacey’s production company. Kahuna also marks the film debut of stage director John Swanbeck and screenwriter Roger Rueff — and, boy, can you…
Digital video is poised to become a major factor in commercial filmmaking, and Time Code, the new feature from Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas), could be used as a commercial for the process, which is its greatest point of interest. The movie is not so much an intriguing story as…
Given that most film studios have multimillion-dollar marketing budgets with which to target eighteen- to 25-year-olds, it’s astonishing how little they seem to know about the everyday life of those they’re supposed to be studying. Drew Barrymore has never been kissed? Please. Rachel Leigh Cook undatable until Freddie Prinze Jr…
The highfalutin’ soap opera in W. Somerset Maugham’s fiction earned him a huge reading public in his day and made him a favorite of movie producers on both sides of the Atlantic. Maugham’s stories and novels — every one stuffed full of romance, deceit and tragedy — have inspired nearly…
There is a killing late in Gladiator, Ridley Scott’s new heroic epic, and it is one of those wonderfully cathartic extinguishings that make wide-eyed audiences rise and cheer. We’ve been herded across much of western Europe by this point, through Germanic mud, Spanish fields and Italian dust, and we’ve seen…
Everybody’s a princess at one point or another. Rich girls work it from birth to final crackup. Bourgeois girls play the precious-‘n’-misunderstood game through adolescence, shifting it into ruthless ambition shortly thereafter. Poor girls can blow an entire lifetime just screwing up their hair and pretending they’re Tolkein’s Galadriel. As…
Poor Kim Basinger! In her first role since bagging the 1998 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for L.A. Confidential (the film that should have won Best Picture and Best Director as well), the actress positively trembles with what seems to be fear. Notoriously insecure about appearing on camera, Basinger…
Unless you’re iron-willed Margaret Thatcher or some other sort of imperialist nostalgiaphile, it’s hard to get choked up these days about the demise of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. For one thing, it’s now eighty years after the fact; for another, joint government in Ireland remains a dicey proposition, and The Troubles…
Go get a few grains of salt to accompany these observations of tenable consistency and enduring potential: The movie industry is run by big kids; nifty sci-fi trickery may distract an audience from emotional shoals; cops and criminals are divided by a fine line; nostalgia and evil are cheaper by…
You’re just going to have to accept that Natalie Portman and Ashley Judd are far too glamorous for the roles they inhabit in Where the Heart Is. It’s an issue that probably won’t hurt the film’s reception: Remember Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias? Your average moviegoer loves movie stars, and…
In the rich mythology of the New Yorker, a periodical renowned for the quality of its writing and the quirks of its writers, no legend carries more weight than that of Joseph Mitchell. On the occasion of the magazine’s 75th anniversary, it is currently great sport among the literati to…
You can bet your last kopeck that newly elected Russian president Vladimir Putin hasn’t so much as breathed Josef Stalin’s name while prosecuting an expensive war in Chechnya and setting his old secret-police comrades loose in pursuit of the new Russia’s capitalist bandits and money-launderers. In the former KGB agent’s…
Love & Basketball is divided into four quarters. Thank God there’s no overtime. The directorial debut from writer Gina Prince-Bythewood — who once penned scripts for A Different World and Felicity — is a film built upon transitions so weak and obvious it’s astonishing the entire thing doesn’t collapse on…
