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 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
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
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
