Oh, that Johnny Depp. Played in some dime-a-dozen rock bands, did some average television, made a few cutesy little movies. Whatever. Yeah, he messes with his looks in a fun way sometimes, but otherwise he merely rides that nicotine-sunken-cheeks thing all the way to the bank. The guy’s popular, but…
Jerry Bruckheimer has always insisted he cares less about critical acclaim than about commercial appeal. “We make movies for the common man,” he said almost three years ago, as Black Hawk Down was crash-landing in theaters. “The pictures that I’ve made over the last 20 years or so have been…
Margo Channing cracked wiser. And her devious protégé cooked up better schemes to steal the limelight. Still, half a century after they lit up the screen, the principals in All About Eve likely would get a charge out of Being Julia. This bittersweet backstage drama skillfully combines — as all…
At the bottom of the ocean, inside a giant pineapple, lives a yellow, oblong sponge who likes to blow bubbles, eat more ice cream than is good for him, and work as a fry cook. The “Krabby Patty” sandwiches he makes are so popular that a one-eyed plankton, who runs…
Let’s just get the term out of the way up front. The term is “fag hag” — and a thousand pardons, sensitive readers, but there is no PC equivalent. This new film, Stage Beauty, is an absolute fag-hag fiesta. Beneath its historical leanings and classic veneer, it’s utterly gaga for…
Most articles written about The Polar Express have focused on its groundbreaking technology, which takes the process used to create Gollum in The Lord of the Rings one step further. Much as Andy Serkis’ performance was digitally mapped and reproduced via CGI, so too is Tom Hanks computer-generated here as…
The witless inanity of After the Sunset is so numbing that the sole reason for any living creature to sit through it — man, woman or household pet — is to marvel at the speed and variety of actress Salma Hayek’s costume changes. After an opening sequence in Los Angeles,…
Directed by . Screenplay by , . Starring .
Rated R.
There is something very important to know about Enduring Love that is not apparent from the title: It’s a thriller. More specifically, it’s a creepy, twisted, overproduced, and often intelligent psychological thriller with an ending all too loyal to the genre. Director Roger Michell (most recently of The Mother, a…
Myriad filmmakers have attempted in vain to film Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ comic book Watchmen since its initial publication in 1986, in which costumed superheroes have been outlawed and are being summarily exiled and executed by an unknown baddie. At the moment, Darren Aronofsky (Pi) is set to direct…
Writer-director Charles Shyer’s Alfie is less a remake of the 1966 film that made Michael Caine a star than it is a retooling that softens the horrific blows struck by the original; it’s sweeter, too, cotton candy spun from decades-old arsenic. The original, written by Bill Naughton (who also penned…
How does Mike Leigh do it? The years pass; film fashions come and go; Hollywood churns its commercial pap. Careers sparkle; others fizz; whom the gods would destroy, they first make famous. Meanwhile, over in England, Leigh makes his films, tracking the intricacies of the lower-class family with the patience…
Those familiar with the films of David Gordon Green (George Washington, All the Real Girls) likely have one big question about his latest feature, Undertow: Is there more of a story this time? The answer is . . . sort of. Green, who favors meditative, meandering portraits, and is often…
When was the last time you saw Paul Giamatti? And when the film ended, did you realize how much you would miss him? It was just last year that Giamatti played the hilariously beleaguered Harvey Pekar in American Splendor, a role that he occupied with slumped, head-hanging perfection. Yet as…
If you aren’t familiar with Bishop T.D. Jakes, it could only mean you’re white or, like much of the entertainment industry and American media, generally clueless about the lives of this country’s tens of millions of evangelical Christians. To black Americans, Jakes is an icon — a preaching, teaching, entrepreneurial…
Ray, director Taylor Hackford’s 15-years-in-the-making biography of Ray Charles, begins as you might hope: with 1959’s “What’d I Say (Part 1)” pulsing on the soundtrack, the organ’s low moans building toward that familiar, funky frenzy. It almost serves as an early climax, a bracing thrill served up before a word…
It takes mighty big stones to name your horror movie Saw, knowing full well that that’s popular fan-slang for Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a movie worshiped by gorehounds worldwide. When you take that name for your own, you had damn well better deliver a memorable, worthy contender to…
Even before the movie begins, as the New Line logo is still coalescing on a dark screen, a man speaks on the soundtrack. He’s talking about reincarnation and about what he would do if his wife, named Anna, were to die and return as a bird insisting it was indeed…
There is a phrase bandied about that other film industry — “gay for pay” — that means exactly what it says. The queer thing is, this switch-hitting work ethic obviously applies to the “straight” industry as well, since actors not infrequently launch their careers, or rev ’em up, by playing…
The Grudge bears the imprimatur of Sam Raimi, but alas, neither his sense of fun nor his smarts. The wunderkind director behind the Spider-Man and Evil Dead franchises has followed in the path of Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver with their Dark Castle releases, launching his own lucrative spook factory,…
Maybe you’re one of the many who went to see Hero and were blown away. The historical Chinese setting, the attention to detail, the fights — who could blame you? There’s a better than average chance you may be thinking to yourself right now, “Self, that flick totally kicked ass…
If the tiny Quebecois island of Sainte Marie-La Mauderne is any indication, Michael Moore was right: Canadians do not lock their front doors (an assertion he made in Bowling for Columbine). Of course, the 125 residents of this tiny fictional community have no need to: Murders are unheard of here,…
