Here’s the tagline for the first installment of Miike’s highly regarded (and deeply disturbing) Dead or Alive trilogy: “WARNING: This motion picture contains explicit portrayals of violence; sex; violent sex; sexual violence; clowns and violent scenes of violent excess, which are definitely not suitable for all audiences.” Never mind the clowns. This warning doesn’t even […]
WATCH NOW THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA “You sold your soul to the devil when you put on your first pair of Jimmy Choos,” says Emily (Emily Blunt) to Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), the newest assistant to Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), an icy magazine editor. In order to obtain a good referral at the end of
Katy McLaughlin is a dreamer in the classroom. She fails history in the exclusive Wyoming academy she attends. After two hours of exam time she hasn’t put a word down on paper, although, she tells her father, “I wrote it in my head.” What she’s dreaming about are horses their strength and power, their ability
WATCH NOW FLY AWAY HOME FLY AWAY HOME (A-2, PG): This is director Carroll Ballard’s girl-and-her-geese film, to form a superb triptych with his boy-and-his-horse epic The Black Stallion and man-bonds-with-wolf adventure Never Cry Wolf. Sheer beauty makes up for any lack of credibility. After her mother is killed in a car crash, 13-year-old Amy
EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859, it was immediately controversial because it challenged the then-accepted explanations for the origin of life. Today, according to this compelling documentary, co-written and narrated by former presidential speechwriter, TV host and actor Ben Stein (Win
WATCH NOW EXTREME MEASURES is a cut above the average thriller. Its “mad scientist” plot a reputable researcher (Gene Hackman) collects homeless derelicts in Manhattan for spinal cord experiments is only a cover for exploring very relevant issues in medical ethics. Hugh Grant plays the idealistic E.R. doc who stumbles onto the conspiracy and pursues
WATCH NOW One of the more successful entries into the Stephen King horror film genre (and probably the best under the Dino De Laurentiis production label), The Dead Zone is aided in no small part by Christopher Walken in the lead role. Walken stars as high school teacher Johnny Smith, who wrecks his Beetle and
WATCH NOW EYES WIDE SHUT Stanley Kubrick’s last film closely follows an early 20th-century Arthur Schnitzler novella and transfers it from Vienna to contemporary New York. A sympathetic young doctor and his wife (Bill and Alice, played by Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman) are well-off and devoted to their young child. They seem happily married
WATCH NOW Dirk Bogarde’s mustache in Death in Venice stands as one of the most disturbing hairstyles ever put on film. Combined with his semi-shaggy banker’s do and his 1910s attire (say, sitting on the beach in a white three piece suit), his appearance is unforgettable even if this movie is relatively otherwise. Hopelessly abstract
WATCH NOW FACING THE GIANTS (not yet rated, PG): Grant Taylor (Alex Kendrick) coaches the Eagles, a Christian high school football team on a losing streak. That, combined with news that he and his wife, Brooke (Shannen Fields), are unable to have children, results in Grant becoming depressed. He rediscovers his faith in God by
