“No more soccer!” declares small-time thug Sing (writer-director-star Stephen Chow) as he vigorously stomps on a child’s ball. In the context of Kung Fu Hustle, it’s a pathetic attempt by Sing to make himself look tough. The larger signal, however, is to followers of Chow’s work–it’s a direct reference to…

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that your moviegoing family is absolutely up to date on every major release this year. Not a Friday goes by that you don’t go see something new. Then you look in the paper and see that the only major release coming up this…

When was the last time you walked out of a theater feeling shell-shocked, saying to anyone who would listen, in language more profane, “Dude, that was some seriously messed-up stuff”? Not your garden-variety messed-up stuff, mind you, like in Saw. Not the messed-up revelations of political docs. We’re talking the…

The Groden family lives out in the middle of the New Mexico desert, far from main roads. They grow, harvest and/or kill all their own food, own their own home and make what little money they need from crafts. They have no phone or indoor plumbing, and they haven’t paid…

The Ring, Gore Verbinski’s 2002 remake of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu, offered sufficient closure that it didn’t exactly demand a sequel. The horror lay in wondering why a mysterious videotape kills viewers seven days after they watch it; to a lesser extent, there was the mystery of the creepy girl, face…

Everyone with a TV remembers President Bush in the flight suit, landing on that aircraft carrier, standing in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner and triumphantly declaring that major combat operations in Iraq were over. Two years on, many feel like asking what exactly he meant by that. Gunner Palace…

Come this time next year, The Jacket may well occupy the slot in movie discourse that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind does now–that of the film that coulda-shoulda-woulda received more Oscar nominations if only it hadn’t come out so early in the year and been forgotten by those with…

If you want to know what Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior is all about, it’s pretty easy to sum up. It starts with a big fight, as a group of local villagers plays capture the flag in the branches of a large tree. Then there’s a brief stretch of plot, as…

This much can be said for the movie version of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events: Its villain, Count Olaf, just might be Jim Carrey’s finest screen role. A bitter, would-be master thespian who delights in donning ridiculous disguises and adopting funny accents, he doesn’t seem that far removed…

If you’ve already decided to see Ocean’s Twelve, it’s probably best not to read much about it. Unlike its predecessor, a remake that clung to a hoary heist formula, the sequel contains ample pleasures, most of which amuse as the result of surprises both great and small. There’s no one…

Most articles written about The Polar Express have focused on its groundbreaking technology, which takes the process used to create Gollum in The Lord of the Rings one step further. Much as Andy Serkis’ performance was digitally mapped and reproduced via CGI, so, too, is Tom Hanks computer-generated here as…

Those familiar with the films of David Gordon Green (George Washington, All the Real Girls) likely have one big question about his latest feature, Undertow: Is there more of a story this time? The answer is…sort of. Green, who favors meditative, meandering portraits, and is often compared to Terrence Malick…

A parody of Gerry Anderson marionette shows (such as Thunderbirds and Joe 90), Jerry Bruckheimer action movies and the ’80s cartoon-toy line M.A.S.K. , Team America: World Police boils down all those ingredients to their essences, starting with the theme song “Americaaa… Fuck yeah!” (scored like Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone”…

Here’s a message for all you single, horny, hot-blooded, heterosexual males out there: It’s time to break out the champagne. Wait, scratch that, make it Jack Daniel’s–lonely single guys seldom have use for champagne. There’s big news to tell, fellas: In When Will I Be Loved, Neve Campbell has ditched…

If Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence were a live-action sequel, there would be a lot of gossip about star histrionics, creative conflicts and so forth. Since the original Ghost in the Shell, first released nearly 10 years ago, made an anime icon out of its star, the frequently nude…

As a reviewer, it can be very tempting to want in on the ground floor of a phenomenon, to say you were there first when some low-budget feature with a nifty premise made its festival debut, only to be picked up by a big studio and become a national phenomenon…

You may have already heard the stories about A Home at the End of the World. In what many viewers have deemed a big loss, Colin Farrell’s penis no longer appears in the film. The official line is that test audiences found it too distracting, though that seems unlikely, given…

If you’re wondering how Hollywood could possibly adapt Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, a collection of similarly themed short stories bound together by the slenderest of common threads, the answer is that it didn’t. The credits for I, Robot read “suggested by Isaac Asimov’s book,” but the canny sci-fi fan will…

America’s Heart & Soul, the debut feature from commercial director Louis Schwartzberg, is being depicted in some quarters as the antidote to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, mostly because it’s a documentary, being released around the same time, about the USA. For more simplistic minds who equate anti-Bush sentiment with hatred…

It’s often a challenge to fairly assess a film that, by its very conception, is simply targeted to an entirely different demographic from one’s own. I am not by nature romantic or female; for those who are, it may have to suffice that the mostly double-X-chromosomed crowd watching The Notebook…

It begins with the roar. That unmistakable sound, like an untuned violin being scraped against a rusty saw blade. Anyone with any exposure at all to global pop culture knows it; even Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin reused it in their otherwise unfaithful Hollywood remake. The credits, in Japanese, unscroll…

As much of the civilized world now knows, the latest Harry Potter director is Alfonso Cuaron, best known for the explicit teen sexual awakening movie Y Tu Mamá También. As such, it may come as little surprise that his Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban begins with the teenage…