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
WATCH NOW Classic children’s television show hosts like Mister Rogers and Barney make great role models for children, but their trite style makes them easy targets for adult jokes. Danny DeVito’s latest project, Death to Smoochy, is well-intended with its mockery of children’s television and those inane hosts, however it is completely misdirected in its
WATCH NOW FAHRENHEIT 9/11 Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore has once again created a polemical pseudo-documentary. This one attempts to explore and expose the contested issue of the legitimacy of George W. Bush’s presidency, his business links to Saudi Arabia and his motivations for beginning the war in Iraq. Moore uses the same personal, subjective
WATCH NOW FALLEN ANGEL This Hallmark Hall of Fame holiday special, based on the 2001 novel by Don J. Snyder, begins on nine year old Terry’s birthday when he is given a fingerprinting set. He fingerprints the little neighbor girl, Katherine Wentworth, who is visiting nearby Serenity Cottage, a summer place in Maine, even though
WATCH NOW A FAMILY THING Robert Duvall is Earl, an aging small-town Arkansan who discovers at the death of his elderly, beloved mother that she only raised him He was born of a brief affair between a black friend who died in childbirth and his irresponsible father. His mother’s last wish is that he find
WATCH NOW FAR FROM HEAVEN is writer-director Todd Haynes’s aesthetically gorgeous and genteel emulation of the 1950s so-called woman’s picture, with a major difference in frankness. Julianne Moore’s Cathy Whitaker is an affluent mother of two in 1957 suburban Hartford who seems to have everything. But, as the title suggests, this is not paradise. Haynes
