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…
Although its themes are about as revelatory as those of an average Cathy comic strip (clothes don’t fit, job too busy, male not clairvoyant, AACK!), there’s something irrefutably charming about Philippa “Pip” Karmel’s debut feature, Me Myself I. The editor of the Academy darling Shine has scripted a laundry list…
Rehab, sweet rehab. Last resort of the alcoholic, the drug addict and the would-be suicide. Free room and board, lots of tender loving care and a whole herd of fellow recovering screwups who’ll always be there for you, and are willing to apologize and admit their imperfections at the drop…
Where the Money Is is Hollywood’s latest attempt at a geezer vehicle — in this case, for Paul Newman. Despite his unassailable movie-star credentials and his still-handsome mug, Newman is faced with the inevitable dilemma of the aging leading man: Either make a film that appeals only to other oldsters…
It’s quite possible that American Psycho is a brilliant movie. It’s also quite possible that it’s a dreary, obvious chop-’em-up dressed in Alan Flusser suits and Ralph Lauren boxers, drenched in Pour Hommes aftershave, all to disguise it as bracing satire on the greed-is-good ’80s. The option audiences choose to…
It’s difficult to reconcile American perceptions of Iran, a rigidly authoritarian Islamic fundamentalist society, with the captivating and compassionate films that emanate from the country. Most of these pictures, including 1995 Cannes Film Festival Camera d’Or winner The White Balloon and 1998 best foreign-language film Oscar nominee Children of Heaven,…
At least for the moment, the great (and greatly persecuted) Chinese film director Zhang Yimou has a new muse. Startlingly, she is a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl who has never before appeared on-screen, but in Zhang’s new film, Not One Less, Wei Minzhi manages to carry most of the freight once borne…
