Had The Royal Tenenbaums been made by a first-time filmmaker unburdened by acclaim or expectation, it could be heralded–and then, just as easily, dismissed–as a light, literary exercise in filmmaking that’s as pleasant as it is frustrating. Its tale of a dysfunctional family of geniuses torn asunder then brought back…
It took Andre Dubus all of 18 pages to communicate the grief that fills every frame of Todd Field’s two-plus-hours In the Bedroom, a wrenching bit of filmmaking based on Dubus’ short tale “Killings.” Both story and film tell the same tale in the same solemn and gripping tone, with…
The most daunting thing for an actor is to portray a god, and when that god comes equipped with a tangle of myths and the quickest left jab in history, the actor’s job can soon verge into guesswork. To Will Smith’s credit, he has managed to get, at least partway,…
Love him or not love him, Lasse Hallström has done it again: the human frailty, the sorrowful past, the hopeful future, the triumph of love and family over crushing despair. Ever since he broke out in 1985 with his Swedish feature Mitt Liv Som Hund (My Life as a Dog),…
When he first auditioned for Any Given Sunday director Oliver Stone to play quarterback Willie Beamen, an embittered bench-warmer prone to fits of vomiting before each snap, Jamie Foxx was sure he’d blown it. Stone, as subtle as an ice pick to the cornea, said as much–loud enough so Foxx,…
The laughs are all there in black and white in It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder!, Pegagus Theatre’s stylish, fast-paced chiaroscuro comedy written by and starring Kurt Kleinmann. Twelfth in a series of satirical mysteries featuring lovably bumbling detective Harry Hunsacker (played by Kleinmann), this one gets a…
It’s become a cliché: A stand-up comedian, after years of living out of a suitcase, performing to rooms full (or not) of pleased spectators and merciless hecklers, happens to be in the right club on the right night and gets his Big Break. A sitcom deal follows. Jerry Seinfeld, Kevin…
Before the Thanksgiving dishes were washed and dried, the question was on everyone’s lips: “What are you doing on New Year’s Eve?” The answer, an honest one at least, would sound something like this: “I’ll be taking my chances on the road with all the other amateur drinkers and having…
The tricked-up charms of James Mangold’s Kate & Leopold may be precisely what the moment demands–if you accept the existence of chivalry, the possibility of time travel and the stream of bubbles emanating from Meg Ryan. Skeptics need not apply. Having toured the psychiatric ward in Girl, Interrupted and slogged…
I remember when I realized Dale Chihuly had entered some sort of parallel art universe. It was during the mid-’90s, and I was visiting my parents, who a few years back retired to one of those depressingly uniform, pastel-hued Florida seaside communities. We were sitting there, on my mother’s peach…
String together the words “modern” and “virginity,” and likely the resulting image is of Britney Spears getting friendly with a boa constrictor on MTV. But the same kids who watch Total Request Live are also taking their parents’ and grandparents’ lead and becoming more interested in a 470-year-old virgin, the…
(Editor’s note: The following contains a very un-P.C. sexist rant. The author is not normally a pig, but Yuletide avarice has affected his reasoning. Please forgive him.) Here’s a conversation that’s been taking place about every week lately at a certain married couple’s Northwest Dallas home. Their names have been…
Since the horrors of dominator culture–destruction, devastation, dumb-assness–do not appear to be receding of their own accord, there’s great poignancy to the new cinematic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The film succeeds as massive, astonishing entertainment; enthralling us is its chief…
Having given us The Shawshank Redemption in 1994 and The Green Mile five years later, director Frank Darabont finally busts his way out of prison with his third feature, The Majestic (which, incidentally, has the worst ad art since Green Mile). Working from a script by Michael Sloane–no Stephen King…
Ever since his debut film Cronos, Spanish director Guillermo del Toro has been the focus of much undue adulation among critics and the Internet community of self-professed horror geeks. The problem is that del Toro’s work thus far simply doesn’t measure up to this kind of talk. Cronos’ biggest novelty…
If you can get past the fact that the central characters of Nickelodeon’s computer-animated feature Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius–the precocious, Chris Isaak-coiffed hero of the title (voiced by Debi Derryberry), his square suburban parents (Mark DeCarlo and Megan Cavanagh) and token, demographic-spanning friends–look like the kind of generic, Mexican-made bootleg…
Novice screenwriter John Scott Shepherd was obviously paying attention in 1999. He no doubt noticed the massive mainstream and critical success of American Beauty and the cult followings of Fight Club and Office Space, and surely said to himself, “Hmmm, this whole thing about cubicle workers being full of pent-up…
Ignore, if you can, the awful trailer for Dinner Rush, now playing in theaters and apparently struck from a grainy work print. Ignore also the simplistic analogies already being made to Big Night and The Sopranos, which prove only that critical quote-hustlers given to hyperbole have noticed the movie contains…
David Salo’s colleagues and classmates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have absolutely no idea how he spends his free time. It’s not that the 32-year-old linguistics grad student is ashamed of his hobby (or obsession), which has occupied him for some 26 years. They simply cannot be bothered with it…
‘Tis the season to roll out the proverbial cash cows of Christmas–those obligatory feel-good productions, given a tragic twist perhaps or a comic shakedown, but ultimately setting their sights on invigorating the spirit and enriching the box office. After all, what would the holidays be without three different theatrical versions…
Beneath the hazy, mystifying layers of Vanilla Sky lies a remarkable Tom Cruise performance–one that, to a large extent, takes place beneath a makeup artist’s piled-on scars and a costumer’s blank “prosthetic” mask. As David Aames, hipster publisher of Maxim-like magazines, Cruise plays a lothario so vain he plucks out…
The combatants in Patrick Stettner’s compelling first feature, The Business of Strangers, are a middle-aged software executive (Stockard Channing) wearing a steel-blue suit and an air of professional hauteur; the executive’s mysterious new assistant (Julia Stiles), fresh out of Dartmouth and full of self-righteous aggression; and a cocky “headhunter” (Frederick…
