Based on the true story of three young Aboriginal girls who walked 1,500 miles across the Australian Outback to be reunited with their mothers, Rabbit-Proof Fence might well be subtitled True Grit in recognition of the courage and single-minded determination that drove the trio to undertake such a perilous journey…
Al Capone himself probably couldn’t kill Chicago. The bawdy Kander and Ebb musical has been charming theater audiences since 1975 with its gleefully jaundiced view of life, and Rob Marshall’s inventive movie version will likely win a lot of new friends for the stagestruck murderess Roxie Hart, her sharpie lawyer…
Here’s a tricky little movie to review, as it’s going to divide audiences fairly drastically. Conservatives, especially black ones like Larry Elder and Ken Hamblin, will likely laud Antwone Fisher as a heroic story of a triumphant black man who conquers all his inner demons and outer obstacles (of which…
The biggest event to happen to television this year took place at the multiplex this summer: My Big Fat Greek Wedding, a one-woman show that has blossomed into a one-woman franchise. This spring, CBS-TV will debut My Big Fat Greek Life as a midseason replacement, featuring the entire cast of…
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth’s new home is stunning, and only in part because of its size, which is downright Texan. Driving up, the place has the feel of a concrete-bunkered city on what passes for a hill–in North Texas anyway. At first gander, it looks less like…
I can’t dance. Don’t ask me. Consider yourself warned. My few ventures onto a dance floor with the missus usually ended up with some good Samaritan rushing up, reaching into my mouth and grabbing my tongue to keep me from swallowing it. “I’b okayb,” I’d say as I broke out…
Some say that the spirit of Christmas is joyful giving, sharing the love of family and friends in a cheerful celebration of life-affirming blah, blah, blah. Others suggest that it’s a commercialized greedfest characterized by grabbing, ripping and crying when one doesn’t receive the perfect (pricey) gift. But we all…
Martin Scorsese’s latest epic of the streets, Gangs of New York, means to show us how a great metropolis was forged in the mid-19th-century cauldrons of unbridled greed, ethnic violence and Civil War. It means to give us the city as wild frontier–without the usual cowboy hats. This is a…
Fantasy is at its best when it ennobles our reality, and at the movies this year no fantastic adventure towers above The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The second installment of J.R.R. Tolkien’s delightful yarn is here adapted just as handily as last year’s The Fellowship of the…
It’s easy to presume About Schmidt isn’t much of a movie, since its protagonist, Warren Schmidt, isn’t much of anything. He’s portrayed by Jack Nicholson, but the actor is actually someone who looks like he used to be Jack Nicholson. This Warren, this rinky-dink actuary banished to the wasteland of…
Adaptation is the most overrated movie of the year (of all time?) by people who should know better. Film critics have been suckered in by its gimmick (Being John Malkovich screenwriter Charlie Kaufman can’t adapt a book for the big screen and winds up writing himself into his screenplay, genius!),…
People in show-biz do very weird things to prove their credibility. Starlets pose for skin mags, actors start rock bands, rockers become sit-coms, rappers become tombstones, and now, in a heartwarming feature called Evelyn, James Bond wants us to believe he’s an Everyman. The lovely thing is, it works. As…
It had to happen eventually: the adorably scattered Sandra Bullock and the self-deprecatingly charming Hugh Grant paired in a romantic comedy. As predictable as Miss Congeniality and almost as broad, Two Weeks Notice is an undemanding, by-the-numbers romance that is made bearable only by the presence of its two ingratiating…
Before writer David Sedaris became America’s favorite chain-smoking, gay ex-patriot raconteur, he worked one memorable holiday season as “Crumpet the elf” at Macy’s on 34th Street in Manhattan. It was a scary-weird job, as Sedaris revealed in a wicked radio essay he performed a decade ago on National Public Radio’s…
Regulars at TITAS Command Performances are well-acquainted with the husband-and-wife dance team of Lucia Lacarra and Cyril Pierre. On two occasions the former San Francisco Ballet principals glided through specially choreographed adagio routines at State Fair Music Hall, inspiring standing ovations. And if Lacarra weren’t such a fine dancer, she…
I was about 12–the age of my own daughter today–when my parents made a decision that scars me still. It was the early ’70s, and like millions of Nixon voters, they were scared. Scared of drugs. Scared of youth. Scared of sex and rock and roll. Scared, in short, of…
Here’s a rough estimate of how a standard 24-shot roll of film is typically used in our household: Pictures of feet, walls, ceilings, etc. taken by accident: five Pictures of family, friends, vacation spots: eight Pictures of pet cats taken to “finish up the roll”: 11 As you might imagine,…
Everyone has a favorite Michael Jordan story. Except me. I am one of the world’s few basketball fans who believe Jordan is overrated. Yes, I think he was the greatest player in NBA history, but not by as wide a margin as his fans would have us believe. They want…
Maid in Manhattan, in which Jennifer Lopez goes from pauper to princess, comes not from a screenplay but from a handful of self-help books and fairy tales and fashion magazines cut and pasted together in a glossy montage committed to celluloid. Characters, made from the highest-grade cardboard and resplendent in…
Each of the beautifully made vignettes that make up Rebecca Miller’s Personal Velocity glimpses a young woman caught at a crossroads, faced with an important decision and about to experience one of those rare dilations of vision that can change an entire life. Now, this is a common ploy in…
Consider life’s unbreakable rules. Send Mom flowers on her birthday. Keep your fastball down. Never order lasagna in Des Moines. Don’t go sailing with people you can’t stand. Violation of this last rule has yielded some pretty fair books and movies over the years–Moby Dick and The Caine Mutiny come…
Like the similar, funnier Bring It On, Drumline is intent on proving that marching band participants are genuine athletes. Fair enough: The boot camp-style physical training they go through onscreen will come as an eye-opener to some. Also similar to its cinematic cheerleader predecessor is the notion that at this…
