Eastern Promises (Universal) David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen are becoming a Bizarro World Hitchcock/Cary Grant combo, and the world is a better (and bloodier) place for it. Chucklehead critics too smitten by Cronenberg’s “messages” dismissed this film — a vicious and brilliant exploration of the Russian mob in London —…
Blade Runner: The Final Cut (Warner Bros.): It’s the collector’s-set briefcase that seals the deal, a gunmetal-gray case that all but shouts “Completist dork!” Also: There’s damned near every single version imaginable, plus a making-of doc almost as essential as any iteration of the movie itself. Film school in a…
At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the American painter turned filmmaker Julian Schnabel (Basquiat, Before Night Falls) won the jury’s Best Director award for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, his French-language adaptation of the best-selling memoir by the late Elle magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby. Felled by a massive stroke…
In Starting Out in the Evening, a new film by Andrew Wagner, a pneumatic graduate student spreads honey over the face of the elderly New York novelist she’s trying to seduce. Later, the two will lie down on his bed with their hands by their sides, and later still, he…
It’s that time of year again. Our six critics don’t always (or often) agree, but we’ve combined their top 10 lists (allowing for ties) to pretend like they do! So without further ado, the 10 (or 15) best movies of the year, kind of: There Will Be Blood The Texas…
How tough is it for a movie to find its audience above the din of blockbuster marketing and beyond the clogged distribution pipeline? Tsai Ming-liang, the Taiwanese/Malaysian director regarded as one of the world’s greats, had two films in U.S. theaters this year, The Wayward Cloud and I Don’t Want…
Absolutely, unequivocally, this has been The Year of the Apatow: Judd got Knocked Up to the tune of $150 million (at the box office alone); the super-OK Superbad, which Apatow produced, grossed another $120 million, “gross” being the operative word; and at year’s end, he walks hard to the finish…
An acquaintance who fought in both Afghanistan and Iraq says he has no use for documentaries about George Bush’s bungling of the War on Terror. He has not and will not see a single one of the movies made about the tragic consequences of the administration’s rush to drop bombs…
The first thing you notice when you walk on to the set are the 300 extras in late-1920s period costume, seated at cafeteria tables in a holding area, gazing up at you in their wool suits (for the men) and cloche hats (for the women) as if all of this…
It was only a couple of years ago that the horror genre seemed newly resurgent, like an undead killer digging himself out of the grave. “Fresh-faced” directors such as Eli Roth, Rob Zombie, Darren Lynn Bousman and James Wan—many of whom were dubbed “The Splat Pack”—seemed poised to bring their…
Simmering below the squeamish elder-care euphemism “uncharted territory” is a fearful awareness that when it comes to dealing with the growing army of senile parents, we have no idea what the hell we’re doing. Tamara Jenkins plumbs the depths of that terror in her new film, The Savages, and jacks…
As an actor, John C. Reilly is the opposite of Mr. Cellophane. He doesn’t disappear into a role; roles disappear onto him—the unlikely porn sidekick of Boogie Nights, the inadequately adequate family man of The Hours, the cutup cowboy of A Prairie Home Companion, all stamped and imprinted with the…
Youth Without Youth, Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed return to the fray, is a curious project—well-crafted, personal and movie-movie old-fashioned even in its vanguard aspirations. Simply put, it’s a Faustian romance about the reversal of time and transmigration of souls which, shot mainly in Romania, adds a soupçon of Balkan chic…
Once (Fox) Easily the year’s most perfect pop album — damned good movie too, the finest “musical” of the past 20 years. The disc’s making-of refers to it as a “modern musical,” but Once is as old-fashioned as it gets: Guy (Glen Hansard) meets Girl (Markéta Irglová), they fall in…
Here’s the thing: Tim Burton pulled it off. Nearing the end of an uncommonly strong year for American movies, he’s taken a hallowed classic of the modern musical theater, hemmed in the narrative from well over two hours to well under, cast confessed non-singers in the principal roles and somehow…
Hell of a thing, getting Mike Nichols to adapt the yer-kiddin’-me story of Charlie Wilson, the congressman from Lufkin, Texas, who damned near single-handedly helped the Afghans kick out the Russians in the 1980s. Says right there on page 11 of the paperback edition of George Crile’s 2003 book Charlie…
The Bourne Ultimatum (Universal) The final installment in the Bourne-again trilogy is the one in which the CIA assassin’s true identity is revealed. It’s the origin story in reverse — how brilliant. But solving the mystery (and misery, as Jason Bourne’s among the most tormented action heroes of all time)…
Juno marks the second film for director Jason Reitman and the first for screenwriter Diablo Cody, author of the Pussy Ranch blog, which, surprisingly, has very little to do with baby kittens. Reitman, having made his debut with a swaggering adaptation of Christopher Buckley’s Thank You for Smoking, is said…
There are two momentous performances in the Darwinian horror fable I Am Legend. One is by the movie’s star, Will Smith—but more about him in a minute. The other is by the movie’s visual effects—not the ones that bring to life a nocturnal army of shrieking, carnivorous beasties (though those…
Jonathan Demme, who directed Tom Hanks to an Oscar as the AIDS-afflicted lawyer in Philadelphia, may be the most well-meaning filmmaker in Hollywood; Jimmy Carter, winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human…
Paul Schrader’s cinema is largely defined by the pathology of his male protagonists, and with The Walker, he’s added a striking new character to his gallery of loners. Carter Page III (Woody Harrelson) is the degenerate scion of a political family. Openly gay and eminently presentable, this American aristo makes…
Kites fly high over the San Francisco Bay and Kabul (OK, China), but not much else soars in Marc Forster’s flaccid adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s vivid 2002 novel, which covers three decades of Afghanistan’s misery under serial totalitarian rule. Arriving on the heels of Atonement, The Kite Runner tells a…
