Although his name sounds like an inventory notebook for candy bars, Heath Ledger is presently overcoming this confusion–as well as the plight of the pretty boy–to become one of contemporary cinema’s more vital actors. In The Four Feathers–as in The Patriot, A Knight’s Tale and Monster’s Ball–Ledger once again plays…
Muccino (But Forever in My Mind) pays his respects to Fellini (Juliet of the Spirits on television) and Tarantino (a Reservoir Dogs poster), then straddles with aplomb the intergenerational niche he’s carved between. It’s a mostly engaging approach, as confused Gen-Xer Carlo (Stefano Accorsi) struggles with his feelings for his…
Originally meant to be called Springtime for Hitler, Mel Brooks’ first feature as writer-director was only a moderate success when released in 1968. Now, it is legendary and for good reason. (It has, of course, also spawned a hugely successful musical.) This story of a manic, larger-than-life Broadway producer (Zero…
He’s one of Oprah’s Angels and an Olympic champ, a published author (of his own autobiography, Harnessing Anger) and, soon enough, the subject of a Walt Disney-produced feature based on his life’s story (cf. The Rookie, Remember the Titans). Till then, here’s Chris Dalrymple’s engaging (if, at a mere 75…
The son of a fascistic intelligence agency boss (Gregg Henry) is kidnapped by Sever (Lucy Liu), a ruthless, mysteriously hooded killing machine. The only one who can retrieve the boy is Ecks (Antonio Banderas), a former FBI operative who has been on the skids for seven years, ever since his…
After several years of taking the baddie roles Dennis Hopper was passing on, not to mention the occasional bizarro gamble (say, as Mr. Roarke in the short-lived Fantasy Island revival), Malcolm McDowell returns to prime form in Gangster No. 1. At long last, this spry and mean little film gives…
For those with any kind of pop cultural memory, it’s more than a little surprising to see Ice Cube in a movie like Barbershop. Not because it’s a light comedy–Friday was, too, and that was certainly in character. What’s odd about Barbershop is its seeming embrace of positions that the…
The much-celebrated Spokane/Coeur d’Alene poet and novelist Sherman Alexie (and writer-producer of Smoke Signals) brings all his ironic intelligence–the great elasticity of his mind–to bear on this striking, semi-autobiographical portrait of a successful Native American writer still struggling to reconcile opposites–his reservation childhood and his urban present, his worldly sophistication…
While it’s no longer the revolutionary tranifesto it may have been, D.A. Pennebaker’s 1973 concert film (first released in 1983) captures David Bowie’s meticulous identity quest with all the frenetic energy (read: slop) of a wildlife documentary on drugs. What this means for you, viewer and/or fan, is that the…
In turn-of-the-century France, a minister (Charles Berling) scandalizes his tiny Protestant community by divorcing his wife (Isabelle Huppert) and falling in love with a newly arrived young woman (Emmanuelle Béart). Their existence is briefly idyllic, until he is called back to run his family’s china factory in Limoges. Between business…
Taking up more or less from where her last concert film I’m the One That I Want (2000) left off, Margaret Cho continues her exploration of the outer limits of raunch with considerable brio. Like every female stand-up since the dawn of time, Cho’s humor is derived from this disparity…
Like Clint Eastwood, Robert De Niro is one of those guys who can make just about any material inherently enjoyable. Also like Eastwood, he will sometimes make you wish he’d pick roles that are a little more challenging. His recent record of relatively disposable films speaks for itself: tough-yet-sensitive cop…
With Harvard Man, writer-director James Toback returns to his roots…in more ways than one. Not only does he admittedly draw on his own collegiate experiences with acid, but he also reuses plot elements from his first produced script, The Gambler, the 1974 James Caan vehicle directed by Karel Reisz. (Similar…
When Robin Williams was America’s favorite funnyman in films like Mrs. Doubtfire, it always felt a little strange admitting that the guy seemed kinda creepy. When he “got serious” in irritating tearjerkers such as Hook and What Dreams May Come, it was certainly in vogue to proclaim him annoying, but…
If you’re looking for a horror film to revitalize the genre, keep looking. If you’re looking for a horror movie with believable characters…yes, you’re gonna have to keep looking. But if sudden loud noises, relentless strobe lights, digital hallucinations and mutilated corpses make you jump, and you believe that nothing…
To misappropriate a choice comment from TV-journalist-turned-music-biz-impresario Tony Wilson, I’ll just say “Ian Curtis.” If you know what I mean, great; if you don’t, it doesn’t matter, but you should probably read more. That is, one need not be a fan of the late Ian Curtis, the epileptic new-wave seer…
Jesse Peretz, founding member of the Lemonheads, has made the transition from musician to filmmaker over the past decade or so by way of music videos, commercials and MTV interstitials. His debut feature, an adaptation of Ian McEwan’s First Love, Last Rites, won an award at the Rotterdam Film Festival…
Citizen-soldiers eager to renew hostilities in the American culture wars can shoot a couple of spitballs at each other this week over Little Secrets, a teen-anxiety movie that leaves no doubt where it stands on family values and moral absolutes: It approves. The shock troops of the Cinema Without Limits…
Andrew Niccol keeps making the same movie over and over again and dressing it in slightly different clothes: the sleek charcoal Hugo Boss grays of Gattaca, the crisp Crayola hues of The Truman Show and, now, the silk-and-satin Hollywood resplendence of Simone. Niccol, writer and director, is obsessed with a…
Sometimes when a director shoots at a barn, the satisfaction comes in simply watching him hit it dead center. So it is with The Good Girl, wherein Miguel Arteta (Star Maps) targets Middle American ennui with wit, compassion and no shortage of ornery malaise. Like Arteta’s second feature, Chuck &…
Robert Evans wrote his autobiography in 1994 as much out of desperation as hubris; it cried out, “Damn it, look at me…please?” He’d produced one film during the past 10 years, The Cotton Club, which was such a colossal failure it rendered Evans a moot point in Hollywood, a position…
Director Neil LaBute (Your Friends and Neighbors, Nurse Betty) seems the unlikeliest candidate to direct the film version of British author A.S. Byatt’s Booker Award-winning best seller Possession. (OK, that’s an exaggeration: There’s always Michael Bay.) LaBute’s earlier films were resolutely tied to American culture, and Byatt’s book couldn’t be…
