Hard Boiled: Two-Disc Ultimate Edition (Weinstein) The Criterion version of John Woo’s masterpiece, about two cops (the overworked Chow Yun-Fat and the undercover Tony Leung) gunning for the Hong Kong Triads, is still the “ultimate” edition. It has a better commentary track (with Woo and Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary,…
Did John Waters sell out? Or did our ever-more-metrosexual age merely render him irrelevant? Certainly long before Hairspray took up residence on the Great White Way in 2002, Waters had abdicated his throne as America’s elder statesman of underground smut in favor of a more lucrative career as a neutered…
In the observation room of the spacecraft Icarus II, passengers sit on a bench in front of a large, rectangular screen displaying a view of what lies ahead. They gaze at the spectacle as you might marvel at special effects on some ostentatious plasma monitor. A seething orb of gas…
I wanted to hate I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, truly I did. Two straight guys pretending to be gay (insert fiscal excuse here); been there, done that (insert all known variants on The Odd Couple here). Rampant homophobia hiding behind liberal pleas for tolerance—blech. And it’s true that…
Just when it seemed Independence Day might be the exclusive province of Michael Bay’s Transformers, MGM rushes in with Rescue Dawn. Nothing if not appropriate, Werner Herzog’s latest feature, based on his 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, offers a suitably fantastic tale of war, freedom and fortitude, set…
George Ratliff’s Joshua debuted at the Sundance Film Festival to raves from a particular breed of audience member: parents. Because, see, no matter how hard Fox Searchlight’s trying to sell this movie as a horror picture—Rosemary’s Baby meets The Omen on the way to The Exorcist’s for a play date—in…
You’re Gonna Miss Me (Palm) A hit at the South by Southwest Film Festival two years ago, Keven McAlester’s doc about the Papa of Psychedelia, Roky Erickson, at long last gets its proper release. But time has done McAlester a tremendous favor: Had he shot the film too soon, he…
The magic has returned to the Harry Potter franchise, albeit magic of the old, black variety. The darkest and most threatening by far of the five Potter films, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is also the only series entry outside of the third, Alfonso Cuarón’s Harry Potter…
Transformers twiddles its big, fat, stupid robotic thumbs for the better part of two hours before jabbing them into your eye sockets and finger-fucking your brain in the last 20 minutes. Yes! It’s torture enough waiting for the iPhone and the second coming of Jesus without wondering when, exactly, this…
Eagle vs. Shark Written and directed by Taika Waititi. Starring Loren Horsley, Jemaine Clement and Craig Hall. Opens Friday. Napoleon Dynamite looks like Cary Grant next to the hero of this Kiwi quirk-a-thon: a hulking, sullen creep named Jarrod (Jemaine Clement, co-star of HBO’s new Flight of the Conchords) whose…
Chancer: Series 1 (Acorn) Available solely in the U.K. for years, this is a small-time release featuring a modestly big-time star at the get-go of his career: Clive Owen, looking all of 12 years old and 73 pounds, is a sacked investment banker who winds up in the employ of…
Anyone can cook, but only the fearless can be great.” So goes the personal mantra of the late celebrity chef Auguste Gusteau, whose disembodied spirit materializes—Jiminy Cricket-style—to guide the rodent hero of Brad Bird’s Ratatouille toward his goal of gastronomic excellence. He also seems to be guiding Bird, who makes…
We’re Americans. We go into other countries when we need to. It’s tricky, but it works.” So declares Michael Moore in the midst of his new documentary, Sicko. Moore may be riffing on the war in Iraq, to name only our most recent intervention, but he’s actually referring to U.S…
Still an all-American bloodhound after all these years, Bruce Willis’ Detective John McClane begins Live Free or Die Hard sniffing around a Rutgers-Camden parking lot and busting the frat boy who’s been trying to cop a feel off his daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Oh, Dad! Since much of the…
It takes Bruce Willis awhile to get warmed up. He’s always just a bit below room temperature — a cool brother, dig, dating back to his Moonlighting days as a private dick belting out “Tighten Up” while going undercover as a man of the cloth in Wayfarer shades. He’s been…
Black Snake Moan (Paramount) The best place to see Craig Brewer’s mash-up of blood-boiling exploitation elements would be a Mississippi drive-in circa 1972. His tale of a black bluesman (Samuel L. Jackson) who chains up a seething, scantily clad cracker nympho (Christina Ricci) would’ve had the lot under martial law…
A skilled actor vanishes into a role; a movie star appropriates it. As presence trumps character, the star personifies Brecht’s alienation effect, and whatever its ostensible subject, the movie becomes a vehicle—the latest installment in an ongoing career or, in the case of a great star, a public myth. Angelina…
Mike Enslin, the travel writer played by John Cusack in 1408, could use a better travel agent. Every hotel room in which he finds himself booked is said to be occupied by the ghost of some suicidal creep or a murderous goon who left behind a pile of bodies in…
Evan Almighty, the follow-up to Bruce Almighty, is the work of an angry God. At 89 minutes that last a lifetime, it’s a sanctimonious sitcom dolled up as the most expensive comedy ever made—$175 mil, so they say, no doubt choking—and marks an unfortunate low point in the history of…
Die Hard Collection (Fox) You don’t need to watch the included preview of Live Free or Die Hard to know it’s going to blow; as this set proves, only odd-numbered Die Hards are any good. The first one, of course, is the perfect popcorn flick, and the bonus-disc extras here…
Glastonbury (THINKFilm) Only a Julien Temple concert doc would get the R rating–for nudity (male, mostly, and not terribly flattering at that), drug use (weed, mostly–yawn), language and sexual content. Also dig the overwrought BBC narration, in which Glastonbury is described as a former refuge for “saints, mystics, and holy…
A true-crime yarn told largely by the criminal, with supporting testimony from his curiously forgiving victim, Crazy Love comes billed as a documentary. But it can’t really be considered journalism—unless you count as journalism the sort of lurid tabloid exposé whose 100-point headline blurts, “ACID-ATTACKER MARRIES HIS VICTIM!” As New…
