RATING:

It occurs to me that there may be one perfect audience member for a Kevin Smith film and that person is. . . Kevin Smith. Who else besides Smith would have such a taste for extreme raunch and mushy, chick-flick style romance?
But Smith’s cinematic schizophrenia may actually work to his advantage. You see, [...]

RATING:
I can only imagine that admirers of Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married—and they are legion—will describe it thusly: A big gumbo of human experience—laughter, sex, music, pain, friendship, family, and love—all stirred together in one rich pot.
To which I say, what a crock.
As the film starts, Kym (Anne Hathaway, who's excellent) is being let [...]

RATING:
Outrage is a completely legitimate feeling for a film to evoke. Indeed, collective self-righteousness and indignation can be very cathartic for an audience. But Changeling spoon-feeds us our outrage. It’s outrage for idiots.
Angelina Jolie—sporting flapper attire and alarmingly red lipstick—plays Christine Collins, a single mother in 1920s Los Angeles. One night, she comes home [...]

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For a completely different kind of heroine, I strongly recommend Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky. His Poppy is willfully cheerful, loving, and giddy—at times obnoxiously so. Leigh dares to ask: Can such good cheer be threatening? If so, why? If this were an American film, Poppy would be a dumb blonde, a bright-eyed naif, a la [...]

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Teen idols have always had to suffer the indignation of having to act wholesome, even if it couldn’t be further from the truth. (David Cassidy was notoriously hooking up with groupies and getting baked on the set of The Partridge Family). Cassidy, of course, hated his squeaky clean image. The kids from High School [...]

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Have we simply run out of good cop stories to tell? Since Serpico, it seems that every other cop movie is some iteration of the same theme—corrupt cops,  compromised values, and torn loyalties. Sometimes, we throw in gangsters (The Departed; American Gangster). Sometimes we give it a twisted buddy angle (Training Day; Blue Steel). [...]

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The trailers and poster art for Oliver Stone’s W. make it seem like a scathing work of satire but in reality, it’s a fairly standard biopic, with a healthy dose of Freudian speculation about the relationship between the elder Bush and his wayward son. Sure, there are some funny moments—a guy like Dubya would [...]

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What Just Happened? is the kind of film that presupposes we want to hang out with a stressed out Hollywood producer who’s having a few very bad days.
Films like this can work—when they’re hilariously funny or rife with fresh insights—but What Just Happened? is only mildly funny and, if you’ve ever seen The Player, [...]

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Turns out the ’80s teen sex comedies Losin’ It, The Last American Virgin, and The Sure Thing were cinematic classics. How else to explain why Sex Drive so shamelessly cribs from them? Oh, well. It’s not like today’s teenagers will know the difference.
Those of us over 30 can do this in our sleep: Ian [...]

RATING:
Have you heard the news? People stink. They are self-serving, cowardly, cruel, and just a crisis away from abandoning all civility. Or so the producers of Blindness would have you think.
Okay, even if you buy into that premise—and I don’t—I still ask you, what’s the point in making this film? Certainly Sartre did the [...]