WATCH NOW ERIN BROCKOVICH Pop culture gets slammed often enough by moralists, so it’s only fair to note those times when all the commercial ingredients come together and benefit social justice. A few million more will see this film and be moved by the environmental struggle against corporate greed simply because it’s also an entertaining […]
WATCH NOW EVAN ALMIGHTY In this sequel to Bruce Almighty, Evan Baxter (Steve Carell, The Office) is a newly elected congressman from New York who leaves his job as a TV news anchor and heads to Washington, D.C., with his wife (Lauren Graham, Gilmore Girls) and three sons (Johnny Simmons, Graham Phillips and Jimmy Bennett).
WATCH NOW This film started a number of careers, and it’s definitely a classic and a high moment in the career of director Richard Linklater (also known for Slacker, the disappointing Before Sunrise, and the new Waking Life). It is an entertaining fictionalization of high school graduation weekend of the senior class of 1976 in
EVER AFTER: A CINDERELLA STORY The ultimate Mr. Right story, of course, is Cinderella, in which a dashing prince (and a fairy godmother) rescue a pathetic girl from a life of poverty and abuse. A lot is changed but the charm definitely remains in this 1990’s feminist (and much more realistic) version. It is set
EVITA As created by director Alan Parker, the movie Evita explodes visually, using the editing and looks-like-reality powers of cinema to overwhelm the senses as it never could on stage. It so thoroughly transcends mere acting or performance that it hardly matters that Madonna plays the title role, or that Antonio Banderas is Che and
WATCH NOW In a darkened room an elderly man sits at a piano. He’s barely outlined by light from a window, his face obscured in shadow. Then, a light fades up, spotlighting him, followed by light everywhere. Thus starts De-Lovely and its style of self-aware artificiality. It purports to be the life of composer Cole
WATCH NOW EXECUTIVE DECISION Your stereotypical Arab terrorists take over a 747 with 400 passengers and defy even their own cooler, wiser leaders to try a nerve-gas bombing on Washington, D.C. A team of high-tech commandos, accompanied by tuxedoed C.I.A. guy Kurt Russell (fresh from a cocktail party), drop on board in midair, and try
WATCH NOW THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE: Emily Rose (Jennifer Carpenter) is dead at age 19. Her shocked family is grieving and afraid. The parish priest, Father Moore (Tom Wilkinson), is charged with criminally negligent homicide because he supposedly told Emily to stop taking the medicine the doctors had prescribed. The young woman had been
WATCH NOW THE EXORCIST William Friedkin’s 1973 film of the William Peter Blatty best-seller may not be the best demon movie ever made, but it’s the one everybody remembers. It defined the satanic in movies and spawned decades of klutzy imitations. No surprise that it should be re-released (with 11 original minutes restored, plus remixed
WATCH NOW Steve Martin’s homage to the 1940s and 50s is a one joke movie that wears thin after 45 minutes (in which Martin inserts himself into classic film noirs, often in drag, where he turns the melodrama into comedy). Fortunately, the laughs are plentiful enough throughout to make Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid worthwhile
