Not unlike Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich–who, with ridiculously expensive spectaculars like Independence Day and Godzilla, transformed B-movie nostalgia into crass adventures in budget-busting–John Carpenter has a thing for the fanciful yet almost lurid trappings of the Saturday afternoon sci-fi flick. Fortunately for us, the veteran director also knows better…

Festering somewhere between an after-school special and kiddie porn lies this frank but heinously melodramatic open wound from veteran Canadian director Léa Pool (Emporte-moi). Adapted by screenwriter Judith Thompson from the novel The Wives of Bath by Susan Swan, Lost and Delirious is about girl joy and girl sorrow, girl…

Cuddly outsider #63178D, please step forward. Well, my goodness, look at you! You are so alternative, so fringe, so punk! So artsy and alienated! So utterly aimless and oozing with angst! Tell us, girl, what ought we to call you? Edwina Scissorhands? That’s one easily justified reaction a viewer may…

There is something fairly amusing about this title, Apocalypse Now Redux. Think about it: Prophetic Disclosure Presently Shows Up Again Newfangled. Of course, in the 10 years since the release of the documentary Hearts of Darkness, we’ve been taught to revere the legend of Francis Ford Coppola walking the line…

Like countless European-American filmmakers before him, African-American filmmaker John Singleton tends to operate under the faulty logic that vengeance equals heroism. Anyone who doubts this assertion is welcome to compare his grooveless, mean-spirited remake of Shaft to the deceptively simple and human original. This isn’t to say that he’s not…

Now here’s a tricky one. Start with a busload of familiar and appealing stars, shacked up together for a couple of weeks in a house in the Hollywood Hills. Assign them their mission: to emulate themselves–sort of–while dutifully reminding us that human relationships can be complicated. Then set the tone…

In a year inundated with massive movies, it’s a pleasant surprise to note that a truly spectacular adventure has arrived in the form of a Disney cartoon called Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Gushing aside, let us now consider the Atlanteans, the mythic race whom co-directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise…

There’s a majesty to Michael Winterbottom’s new film, a majesty and a terrible, icy chill. There’s also a fair bit of invention, as the director of the wrenching Jude–based on Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure–has shifted the locus of that author’s fierce, beloved English west country to the much fiercer…

As ill-titled a movie as you’re likely to discover this year, Henry Bromell’s Panic would deliver itself unto us with much more honesty were it called something appropriate, like Torpor or A-List Clock-Punchers Unite!. It’s a middling film, and while there’s no reason to pick on this fledgling feature with…

Remember glee? Perhaps not, given our penchant in recent times to chuck giddy hearts aside in favor of being stupid, obnoxious and mean. But hey, it’s all right, because the fizzy, caffeinated beverage known as Baz Luhrmann seeks to re-create this elusive emotion for all of us in the form…

“The values that you grew up with are that people come before things,” offers the mother of one of the protagonists of Startup.com, “and that didn’t seem to be a part of this new world.” You sure got that right, ma’am. While this new video documentary by Chris Hegedus and…

A shame, this frenetic mess, as there were loads of reasons to be hopeful. First and foremost, there’s the source material, a cute and clever children’s novel by late writer E.B. White, on par with the anthropomorphized menageries he presented in Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little. There’s the fact that…

It’s a thrill to celebrate an American movie that’s smart, wry and awesome all at once. One doesn’t always opine harmoniously with venerable critic Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, but his giddy appraisal employed in this movie’s ad campaign is right on. Unabashedly formulaic though it is, this roguish adventure…

The Center of the World’s screenplay was written by Ellen Benjamin Wong, based on a story concocted by Wayne Wang, precocious filmmaker-performance artist Miranda July, novelist Paul Auster (who penned Wang’s Smoke) and novelist Siri Hustvedt. With this many cooks in the kitchen, one might expect a deceptively simple stew,…

Like some errant, black-sheep Coen brothers movie that slipped away in the night only to be shorn and butchered by neighboring filmmakers, One Night at McCool’s is set in an obnoxious alter-America populated by obtuse caricatures. While this production from Michael Douglas is being touted as a sexy romantic comedy,…

“Keep a diary and one day it’ll keep you,” said Mae West, and while the sentiment rings true, it does little to explain the mystery of why Helen Fielding’s sliver of literary history managed to keep anyone. Fluffy, shrill and approximately as deep as Cosmo magazine, the book somehow hit…

Somewhere, in deepest New South Wales, Australia, there exists a humble sheep paddock. (In this particular case, the paddock is nearly devoid of sheep–barring the odd sound effect–but never mind that.) The setting is rural, it’s pastoral, it’s quaint as all heck–and it also happens to be hallowed ground for…

Hello, what’s this? Why, could it be another cautionary tale from Hollywood about recreational drugs being–alert the media!–not particularly good for people? (If only they could try the same with guns. Messrs. Heston and Silver: You awake yet?) Indeed, with Blow, director Ted Demme (Beautiful Girls, Monument Ave.) has set…

Justice may be blind, but vengeance, it turns out, has a very short memory. So it goes in Memento, the much anticipated “puzzle” movie from Christopher Nolan (Following), which–as is already fairly well-known–plays out its plot more or less in reverse. Pitting the protagonist (and us) against short-term amnesia and…

We can run, we can hide, we can even try switching films, but there’s just no escaping that pesky Gene Hackman. He starred in The Conversation, he is ubiquitous, and revere him we must–virtually every single time we go to the movies. (There’s even a song by Robyn Hitchcock about…

As pure bang-up adventure, The Mexican is certainly more user-friendly than childish junk like The Way of the Gun, but the attempt to weave adult relationship psychobabble and cultural significance into the action rings utterly false, resulting in whiny gringos in taco-land. Along the road to the explosive conclusion, there…

Commencing with titles none too subtly placed over the bosom of a troubled young mother (Russian actress Dina Korzun) and wending its swift way through the generous advances of a lovable lout (Paddy Considine, the one-man goon squad of A Room For Romeo Brass), Last Resort is a film obsessed…