There is nothing gratifying about watching a bullet blast through a woman’s skull. Exploding helicopters and splattered cattle are utterly indefensible. And few would smile at the image of a little boy being obliterated by a flashy missile. So why is David O. Russell’s Three Kings such rousing entertainment? This…
It begins with a simple request. “Do you want anything to drink?” asks the Warner Bros. publicist, a lanky young man outfitted in a pressed green shirt, a businessman’s tie, and dark slacks. “Some water maybe?” The visiting journalist, ushered into the Crescent Court Hotel suite to interview Three Kings…
The premise is preposterous, the final score inevitable, and the record reading on the feel-good-ometer totally predictable. But Mystery, Alaska comes furnished with some winning quirks and charms — including a very funny bit concerning premature ejaculation at 20 degrees below zero. So even if you don’t really believe that…
Ah, May-December romance! It’s a grand old tradition in movies dating back to 1919’s Daddy Long Legs, and it’s almost always a male fantasy: With the exception of a very small handful of titles, it’s the guy who’s December and the girl who’s May. And even in that small handful,…
A classic that fully merits the designation, Jean Renoir’s 1937 anti-war masterpiece Grand Illusion is, quite simply, one of the greatest films ever made. Recently restored, with a new print struck from the film’s original camera negative — confiscated by the Nazis after the fall of France and thought to…
Period films are, in general, not what you would call a commercial sure shot in the current marketplace, unless of course the period in question is the 22nd century or some “long, long ago” that resembles the 22nd century. In Plunkett & Macleane, director Jake Scott — son of Ridley,…
The fact that Drive Me Crazy is actually based on a novel (How I Created My Perfect Prom Date by Todd Strasser) is a sad comment on the state of contemporary young-adult fiction. The story’s not entirely dreadful, but the fact that a script created from a shuffled deck of…
Behind the camera, Beauty’s driving forces are new to movies, but their theatrical résumés are faultless — a fact that did not escape the deep pockets at DreamWorks. The screenwriter, playwright Alan Ball, is the author of dark absurdist comedies such as Five Women Wearing the Same Dress and The…
The joke that opens Jakob the Liar, the new Holocaust comedy (and talk about an oxymoron) starring Robin Williams, captures the bittersweet quality — the grim reality mixed with laughter — that the rest of the movie tries and fails to embody. The story takes place in an unidentified Jewish…
There’s a long tradition of stories about mysterious drifters who arrive in a small town and either create trouble or catalyze an explosion of long-simmering problems. Mark Twain used that hook, as have Dashiell Hammett (Red Harvest), Akira Kurosawa (Yojimbo), and Sergio Leone (A Fistful of Dollars). Now Hampton Fancher…
The only tools a nice fellow needs to repair the damaged psyches of an entire town are a guilty conscience and a dash of insight. That, at least, is the premise of Lawrence Kasdan’s silly new social parable, Mumford, in which the eponymous hero poses as a psychologist and, despite…
It is the wry humor and amazing equanimity of the men profiled in the documentary Return With Honor that proves most astonishing. They were among the 462 American fighter pilots who were shot down over North Vietnam and became prisoners of war during the Vietnam War. Some were held in…
There are a few plot loopholes in Double Jeopardy that, if scrutinized, would unhinge the entire story and seriously truncate the movie’s running time. Two of the more gaping ones involve narrow escapes allowed between a profoundly wronged wife and her devious, scheming husband. In the heat of their conflict,…
“You and me?” asks catcher Gus Sinski (John C. Reilly) of his old friend, veteran pitcher Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner). “One more time?” It’s a poignant moment, the top of what may be the last game of Chapel’s career before he’s either traded or quits the game he has loved…
Since his TV show ended, Martin Lawrence has gotten more ink for his off-camera life than for his movie career. There’s nothing about Blue Streak that is likely to change that. It’s a shame, because the basic plot — which sounds like something from one of Donald E. Westlake’s Dortmunder…
Modern word processing has made life easier for screenwriters. After all, there’s no need to retype some old classic with your own little changes; nowadays, you can just download the screenplay for, let’s say, The Exorcist, search for “adolescent girl,” replace with “twentysomething single woman,” and — voila! — you’ve…
Whether it’s bad or good commercial luck that the thriller Stir of Echoes follows so closely on the heels of The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan’s wildly successful ghost-story sleeper, it’s bad critical luck. The film has some startling parallels to The Sixth Sense: Both concern psychic communication with the…
Kevin Bacon is talking about his penis. It’s not his fault — not exactly, anyway. Bacon didn’t bring it up, so to speak. He never does, at least not in public. He’s just trying to promote his latest film, the small supernatural thriller Stir of Echoes. But here he is…
When last we encountered Peter and Bobby Farrelly, they were pelting movie houses with industrial-strength jokes about retarded kids, lost semen, found excrement, and exploding house pets. Good plan. There’s Something About Mary turned into last summer’s surprise hit and catapulted the brothers to the top of Hollywood’s A-list –…
There is something fairy-tale-like, but also deeply human, about Twin Falls Idaho, a gentle, beautifully realized tale of love and intimacy that marks the feature-film debut of Mark Polish and Michael Polish. Identical twin brothers, Mark Polish wrote the script, Michael Polish directed it, and both brothers star. It is…
It’s bad enough when a major studio — in this case, Warner Bros. — blows $40 million (or more) on a by-the-numbers film. It’s worse when they blow it on a by-the-numbers film made by people who don’t know how to count. We’re not talking literal math here, but rather…
What is it they say — that even a flea can reach Mount Olympus riding in Pegasus’ mane? Well, in the case of the new Albert Brooks comedy The Muse, Brooks is the flea and Pegasus is his delectable costar, Sharon Stone. But I get ahead of myself. In The…
