Who Cares? No one's likely to tout Cletis, whoever he is
It's not exactly a good sign when a movie starring Tim Allen, Christian Slater and Richard Dreyfuss gets dumped into one or two art-house...
More>>By Luke Y. Thompson
Published: August 01, 2002
Steppin' Out A boy desires his stepmom in the digital video Tadpole
The advent of digital filmmaking has been essentially a good thing, allowing cameras to go places their larger, celluloid-spooling cousins...
More>>By Luke Y. Thompson
Published: July 25, 2002
Deaf and Dope Read My Lips plays out as a twisted and tense con game
Read My Lips (Sur Mes Lévres) puts forth the fascinating and heretofore unexamined theory that being deaf offers its estimable rewards. It...
More>>By Robert Wilonsky
Published: July 25, 2002
Powers Off In Goldmember, Myers' mojo is running low
Not much has changed in the 11 years since Mike Myers used the first Wayne's World movies as a personal launchpad, only tipping his James...
More>>By Gregory Weinkauf
Published: July 25, 2002
Rockin' On Country Bears too weird to pass up
A film that posits a world in which giant fake-looking anthropomorphic bears walk among us without people noticing that they look any different...
More>>By Luke Y. Thompson
Published: July 25, 2002
Promise? Eric Shaeffer improves modestly with Never Again by leaving himself out of it
After endless failed relationships, a middle-aged exterminator and jazz musician (Jeffrey Tambor) begins to think that maybe he's gay. On his...
More>>By Andy Klein
Published: July 25, 2002
Moving Story Pacing, lengthiness slow down Green Dragon
During the last weeks before the fall of Saigon, tens of thousands of South Vietnamese, fearful of NVA recriminations, fled the country for the...
More>>By Andy Klein
Published: July 25, 2002
Ringing True Lovely and Amazing is slow and low-key but also charming and marvelous
Think of it as Todd Solondz light--loads of dysfunction but, thankfully, none of the perversion. In fact, despite deep-seated neuroses,...
More>>By Jean Oppenheimer
Published: July 18, 2002
Hot Legs Eight Legged Freaks skitters most sexily
On the first day (of opening weekend), the lord said, "Let there be, like, this year's Evolution or sumpin', only with more hope for significant...
More>>By Gregory Weinkauf
Published: July 18, 2002
Sub: Par Harrison Ford's latest action vehicle, K-19: The Widowmaker, cruises in a mediocre sea
Of all the A-list men playing dedicated authority figures, Star Wars alums Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson remain among the most amusing and...
More>>By Gregory Weinkauf
Published: July 18, 2002
Big Cheese Stuart 2 is no small feat: a charming sequel
It took the creative giants behind MIIB (a.k.a. Men in Black II) five years to come up with a disappointingly flat and uninspired sequel that not...
More>>By Jean Oppenheimer
Published: July 18, 2002
Graphic, Novel Hanks and Newman are on the bloody and brilliant Road to Perdition
Joe Versus the Volcano ran on cable last week, and contained within that misguided, unmemorable film was a small scene that only now resonates....
More>>By Robert Wilonsky
Published: July 11, 2002
Slow Love Christina Ricci finds a way to warm her wickedly funny cold heart in Pumpkin
If there's any truth to reincarnation, the spirit of Napoleon may walk among us today. It's not unreasonable to conjecture that he has taken up...
More>>By Gregory Weinkauf
Published: July 11, 2002
Flame On Reign of Fire somehow makes dragons and Matthew McConaughey entertaining
For centuries, Western philosophies have interpreted the dragon as a symbol of explosive violence, and, frankly, that's rather one-sided. By...
More>>By Gregory Weinkauf
Published: July 11, 2002
Sunny Delight John Sayles' latest transcends its talkiness
It's daunting to hear that John Sayles' new film, Sunshine State, is almost two and a half hours long and mostly consists of calm conversations....
More>>By Luke Y. Thompson
Published: July 11, 2002
Bet on Black Men in Black II proves fun remakes aren't always an alien concept
Like a jawbreaker that changes color every few seconds you suck it, MIIB: Men in Black II delivers a quick buzz, lots of stuff to look at and a...
More>>By Luke Y. Thompson
Published: July 04, 2002
Kicking Lasses The Powerpuff Girls spank monkey butt aplenty
In her recent book, Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, journalist Rachel Simmons hits a very topical nail squarely on its...
More>>By Gregory Weinkauf
Published: July 04, 2002
Northern Extremes The all-Inuit Fast Runner brings back universal lessons from the ends of the earth
It has been 80 years since the adventurous son of a Michigan iron miner trained a silent-movie camera on the everyday life of an "Eskimo" family...
More>>By Bill Gallo
Published: July 04, 2002
Bad Deeds Someone oughta pop a Capra in Adam Sandler's behind
Talk about trading down: Adam Sandler now stands in for Gary Cooper, Winona Ryder for Jean Arthur, screenwriter Tim Herlihy (The Waterboy, Billy...
More>>By Robert Wilonsky
Published: June 27, 2002
Eeez Not Zat Bad a Guy, No Despite its many flaws, The Emperor's New Clothes is an enlightening look at Napoleon
There are a few dubious claims affecting the popular perception of the life and death of Napoleon Bonaparte. Despite the legend, he wasn't, at...
More>>By Gregory Weinkauf
Published: June 27, 2002
The Madness of Genius The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky could make you crazy
Pretend Derek Jacobi is John Cleese, imagine it's all but a daft and cruel joke, and you will find Paul Cox's film tolerable; if you can't, you...
More>>By Robert Wilonsky
Published: June 27, 2002
Saving the Neighborhood Hey Arnold! The Movie is more like an extra-long TV episode
An evil industrialist (voice of Paul Sorvino) intends to knock down the neighborhood in which Arnold (Spencer Klein), the kid with the...
More>>By Andy Klein
Published: June 27, 2002
Holden On To Nothing This "homage" to Catcher in the Rye is phony, bland and condescending
Clearly, director Malcolm Clark and writer Sean Kanan (an actor by day, not a writer, and no friggin' duh) wanted to adapt J. D. Salinger's The...
More>>By Robert Wilonsky
Published: June 27, 2002
Reel Life The unabashedly romantic Cinema Paradiso returns at its fattest and most fully realized
Naked emotion is a tricky thing to sell, especially in semiautobiographical films about confused mama's boys gradually learning that life exists...
More>>By Gregory Weinkauf
Published: June 27, 2002
Dicking Around Minority Report is guilty of being a fun ride with a bumpy end
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...
More>>By Robert Wilonsky
Published: June 20, 2002