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…
To the woman who broke Adrian Lyne’s heart all those years ago: Stop what you’re doing right this minute. Drop everything; pick up the phone, and call him. Apologize profusely for cheating on him. Tell him it’s all your fault and you’re a worse person for leaving him. Offer him…
Anybody who takes a second, sorrowful look at the charred rubble in lower Manhattan, the body counts in the West Bank or the brazen denials of Slobodan Milosevic will have to conclude that the brotherhood of man isn’t attracting many good recruits these days. Neither, for that matter, is the…
The most compelling element of Dogtown and Z-Boys, Stacy Peralta’s valentine to a crew of footloose Southern California teenagers who set a radical new style in skateboarding in the 1970s, is the documentarian’s heartfelt belief in the lasting importance of the enterprise. As a member of the tribe and an…
Deuces Wild is, like Vulgar and Chelsea Walls, yet another new release that is now inexplicably being distributed theatrically — rather than slinking away to the video/cable market — after having explicably sat on the shelf for more than a year. The film’s age is immediately evident both from how…
Kick a boy enough times and he’ll become a man. The question is, of what sort? In his long-awaited feature portrait of the comic-book hero Spider-Man, director Sam Raimi brings forth a kaleidoscopic answer full of hope and verve. Flashy enough for kids and insightful enough to engage adults, the…
Poor William Randolph Hearst. The snapping dogs of Hollywood just won’t leave the guy alone. It’s been barely sixty years since a little epic called Citizen Kane portrayed the great newspaper tycoon as a ruthless dictator who degenerated into an emotional basket case, and already there’s more bad publicity in…
The thoroughly unlikable heroine of Life or Something Like It is a vain, starlet-like bleached blonde employed by a Seattle TV station. To call her a reporter is to defame reporters. Her hairspray outweighs her brain, and everything in her life — from her obsessive workouts at the health club…
Women who exchange descriptions of their sexual encounters are certainly no more appealing than men who boast in locker rooms, but they seem to get more free passes. If, in the name of social candor, Jerry Springer can induce sisters to confess what they’ve done with barnyard animals and every…
I don’t know what most devout Christians expect from the Second Coming, but in a relentlessly inspirational new movie called Joshua, the Son of God does it all for the citizens of a small town in Alabama. He tosses a 500-pound log onto his shoulder as if it were a…
The perpetrators of the new Sandra Bullock vehicle, Murder by Numbers, could be hauled in on any number of charges, including plagiarism and child abuse. But their most obvious crime is first-degree dullness. A thriller without thrills, a mystery devoid of urgent questions, this merely bloody piece of business spends…
The two slacker anti-heroes of Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También (And Your Mother Too) come furnished with all the usual glitches of late adolescence: raging hormones, impatient wanderlust, contempt for their elders and a jones for dope and beer. In fact, Julio (Gael García Bernal) and Tenoch (Diego Luna)…
The work of Henry Jaglom is an acquired taste that, for many of us, remains unacquired. While his new film, Festival in Cannes, is not a huge departure from the usual, it may be his most accessible effort for non-fans since 1991’s Eating. Not surprisingly, the movie is set at…
The eternal beauty and constant surprise of baseball are always getting sabotaged by Hollywood’s urge to reduce the grand old game to a set of cliches as tedious as spring-training drills. The ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson elevated Field of Dreams, the Wild Thing’s errant fastball gave momentary charm to…
