Morally irreproachable and flat as a pancake, Michael Apted’s Amazing Grace is set among bickering House of Commoners in late 18th-century London, but the movie belongs squarely in the currently blooming subgenre of Whites Saving Dark-Skinned Victims of Empire. Or at least it would be were Apted able to bring…
I am sorry to say that Peter did not feel very well that evening. His mother put him to bed and gave him a dose of chamomile tea. ‘One tablespoon to be taken at bedtime.’ But Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail had bread and milk and blackberries for supper. —Beatrix Potter,…
Made when he was a stripling of 24, Argentine filmmaker Daniel Burman’s first feature, A Chrysanthemum Burst in Cincoesquinas, was a violent story of love and revenge. He must have gotten that out of his system: Though Burman’s subsequent movies also traffic in what he calls “the great transitions of…
Of all the hundreds of pedophile priests to be flushed out of the woodwork in recent Catholic Church history, Father Oliver O’Grady has to be one of the most harmless-looking and the most sinister. Wispy, unremarkable and accommodating, with an ingratiating half-smile playing permanently about his thin lips, Father Ollie,…
In The Last King of Scotland, an adequate thriller redeemed by Forest Whitaker’s sensational turn as Idi Amin, freshly qualified Scottish physician Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) arrives in Uganda in 1970, ravenous for adventure. Under the rigorous and vaguely romantic tutelage of a lithe blonde with a flabby marriage and…
Those twentysomethings, poor dears, can never catch a break in the movies. First this maligned generation is told, in countless gritty indies and perky studio comedies, that they’re rowing through life without oars. Now, director Tony Goldwyn’s admirably understated handling of dispiritingly slender material suggests that if you’re pushing 30,…
Another Gay Movie Directed by Todd Stephens. Screenplay by Stephens, based on a story by Stephens and Tim Kaltenecker. Starring Michael Carbonaro, Jonah Blechman, Jonathan Chase and Mitch Morris. Opens Friday. A blow-by-blow remake of American Pie, albeit with more gerbil sex play, Todd Stephens’ Another Gay Movie follows four…
Awinning tale of sex, real estate and more or less immaculate conception, Quinceañera, as you might expect from a white-made drama about Latino life in Los Angeles’ Echo Park, threatens at first blush to be all about a pregnant teenager and a prodigal cholo in the ‘hood. Yet this saucy,…
Just in time for its U.S. release, Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecrossí fierce docudrama The Road to Guantanamo received a giant shot of free publicity in early June with the news that three Arab inmates at the infamous detention center in Cuba–none of whom had officially been charged with any…
Remember what a fun couple Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves were in Speed? Well, forget that. In The Lake House, Warner Bros.’ slow and heavy kickoff to the summer romance season, Bullock and Reeves play the mopiest lovers to hit the big screen since Tony and Maria channeled Romeo and…
