Magnolia, the third film from writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, is a brilliant piece of garbage — mesmerizing, but only because you can’t believe someone has the temerity to put so much into so little. Three hours and eight minutes long, and all it has to say at the end is…
Of the readers who bought four million copies, in no fewer than 30 languages, of David Guterson’s 1995 best seller Snow Falling on Cedars, many have likely been looking forward to the movie version. Others have probably been dreading it. For better or worse, this multifarious story about nativist bigotry,…
In the poster art for The Hurricane, Denzel Washington glowers, one bandaged fist cocked for a right to our jaw. He may play a boxer, but this isn’t a boxing movie; indeed, Washington spends nearly two hours caged in a cell. Yet this isn’t a prison picture either — more…
The spirit of Fellini hovers over Train of Life, the third so-called Holocaust comedy to come down the pike. Far superior to either Life Is Beautiful or Jakob the Liar, the French-language production has a silliness and a buffoonish humor reminiscent of Amarcord and Fellini’s Roma, yet somehow it feels…
Here’s the deal. If January 7 rolls around and there still exists some semblance of civilization (damn!), take a trip to — ugh — the Galaxy Club. The club itself doesn’t have much to recommend it: surly doorguys, a merciless no-ins-and-outs policy, shitty bathrooms (pun fully intended), and a chintzy…
The large front door of the Dallas Museum of Natural History opens; a family enters. While her mother is paying, a young girl spots a Christmas tree decorated in origami animals — pandas, frogs, hummingbirds, camels — and runs toward it. She looks up and up, finally noticing the long,…
Note: For the sake of being obnoxiously frank, this critic opts to divulge his favorites while pretending, in keeping with the season, to be hammered on spiked eggnog. Cheers! Honorable Mention: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, directed by George Lucas and his kids. Gimme a light saber to…
1. The Cider House Rules No other film this year captures the complex, bittersweet nature of life so movingly. Michael Caine and Delroy Lindo are standouts in a terrific ensemble cast. Filled with grace, compassion, and humor, this is director Lasse Hallstrom’s best work since My Life as a Dog…
Here I sit, polishing this year’s Jimmy Awards and etching the names of actors, directors, designers, and productions in calligraphic script on the base plaques. Yet I can summon little enthusiasm for theater at the moment. It’s not because of theater itself, but because of the inevitable disruptions and dissipations…
Bill Barter can’t remember exactly when it occurred to him and his fellow Arlington Museum of Art board members that they could lose Joan Davidow. All he can recall is that the board knew losing the museum’s founding director would lead to nothing but turmoil. After all, Davidow is closing…
The mothers of invention It was Richard Franck who actually wrote, “Art imitates Nature” in his Northern Memoirs, printed in 1694; whoever revised it to “art imitates life,” though, nailed a concept that crystallized 1999 on the Dallas-Fort Worth visual art scene. Take tragedy and misfortune, for example; in life,…
A watershed year. That’s the buzz around the film critics’ water cooler — or should that be popcorn stand? — as 1999, and the first century of film, comes to a close. You can hear the whispers as they turn to shrieks of ecstasy: Just like 1974! Such are the…
Film critics are by nature a sour lot, so it is with truly great pleasure I suggest that 1999 has been the best year for cinema — certainly for American cinema and even for the major studios — in my 15 years on the beat. I’m at a loss to…
1. The Blair Witch Project Both the hype and the inevitable backlash have died down, and what remains is still quite a movie — the horror film reinvented, and the faux documentary brought of age as a legitimate nonparody genre. 2. The Limey A standard revenge melodrama charged up with…
Originally, Walt Disney wanted to call his symphonic feature Fantasia “Concert Film.” As a kid, I wanted to call it “Boring Piece of Crap.” However, my mother would never tolerate such language. Nonetheless, old Walt wanted cartoons to be respected as an art form. He wanted to merge the perceived…
Oh, how this city tries. Dallas, otherwise known as America’s biggest small town, is celebrating the countdown to the new century with a street fair-meets-Times Square party. Our New Year’s Eve celebration features children’s activities and performances by kiddie fave Eddie Coker, Ballet Folklorico, and Earl Harvin’s jazz trio –…
The press release for the second production by Impulse Theatre of the Fearless promises the troupe will present a “new form of entertainment for bargoers in Deep Ellum and Denton: unique, cutting-edge theatrical events in bars.” The release continues that “people who wouldn’t normally choose to spend their Friday or…
“If God had meant us to think with our wombs, then why did he give us a brain?” You have to chew on that, one of playwright Clare Boothe Luce’s most famous quotes, for a while, and even then, you’re still not sure what you’re tasting. I interpret it as…
Your wish is granted There’s still a little life left in the National Endowment for the Arts. The organization is funded for fiscal year 2000 at about the same level as it was in the 1999 budget — just under $100 million. From an all-time high of $175 million disbursed…
Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday lasts as long as a National Football League game — which would be no crime were the film anything more than nearly three hours’ worth of outtakes spliced together by a palsied editor with a hearing problem. Entire scenes are inaudible, the hip-pop collage soundtrack…
The Talented Mr. Ripley numbs as much as it unnerves. However, that’s exactly the type of thriller you might expect from Anthony Minghella, the writer-director who gave critics something to rave about and many a reluctant date something to snooze through with the Academy Award juggernaut The English Patient. At…
At first glance, Pedro Almodovar’s All About My Mother seems uncharacteristically grim for a filmmaker with such a demonic sense of humor. Within 10 minutes, the heroine’s 17-year-old son is hit and killed by a car, which propels her and the events of the film into motion. In the next…
