The basic story, based on novel by Alberto Moravia, is this Director Fritz Lang (playing himself) is in the process of directing a film version of Homer’s Odyssey. Lang has already shot some scenes, but his boorish film producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance) is upset with the results so he has fired most of the […]
Control Room, the outstanding new documentary about media coverage on the Iraq war, is required viewing not only for any journalist, but also for anyone who truly believes the news they watch or read. History is written by the winners, and they have plenty of weapons and public relations savvy on hand. It’s March 2003
Judging from Copycat, there’s more of them than we’re giving credit to. Copycat is the story of a serial killer apparently chasing psychologist Helen Hudson (Sigourney Weaver). The only problem is, some 13 months earlier, another killer (Harry Connick Jr.) almost got her, and the experience was enough for her to lock herself into her
One has to wonder if Martin Scorsese’s worldview stops at the New Jersey state line. A shocking disappointment, Bringing Out the Dead marks Scorsese’s first film since Kundun, and his first contemporary movie since Casino. So neither of these took place in New York, but Scorsese is so in love with his hometown, it shows
Let’s just get it out there: Bubba Ho-Tep is about an elderly Elvis Presley (Bruce Campbell) fighting a mummy in a Texas rest-home. In Elvis’s corner, there is an elderly African-American fellow (Ossie Davis) who believes he’s JFK. You could say JFK is included out of faithfulness to the short-story upon which Ho-Tep is based
In this lighthearted, unpretentious comedy, Daniel Auteuil sheds the intensity of his previous roles in Les Voleurs, Ma saison préférée, Manon of the Spring, to name just a few and plays a shy, crooked-nosed accountant too boring to be tolerated by just about anyone. His François Pignon an appropriate name for somebody who is about
Austrian bad boy filmmaker Michael Haneke follows up his nihilistic home invasion psychodrama Funny Games with the elusive Code Unknown. Frustrating and seemingly disconnected, Haneke’s crafted one of those strange films that, at the time of viewing, inspires reactions ranging from outrage (“What a waste of my time!”) to bafflement (“What’s the point?”). It’s certainly
Coffee and cigarettes. What is it about this magical combination of caffeine and cancer that’s so irresistible to millions of café and pub patrons around the world? Despite its title, don’t go looking to Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes for the answer. A series of vignettes populated by an all-star cast of actors and musicians,
After their son is injured walking on the bustling streets of New York City, Cooper and Leah Tilson (Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone) inexplicably decide to move their family to the “safer” confines of the countryside (because danger certainly doesn’t lurk out there). The house they buy is Cold Creek Manor, a massive property that
Masterpiece Theater meets Mayberry in Anthony Minghella’s Cold Mountain, a stodgy and superfluous adaptation of Charles Frazier’s Civil War romance novel that’s every bit as unconvincing as it’s meant to be epic. Frigid and detached to the point of numbness, the passionless period piece is too staged, too dry, and too silly to matter, though
