It would be a hard heart indeed that couldn’t find a bit of affection for a movie that starts with two black police officers going undercover at a Klan rally and ends with what appears to be an invasion of Cuba. That movie, Bad Boys II, which comes raging into summertime theaters still woozy from […]
The movie industry’s biggest release of his time involves the CIA dealing with a rogue nuclear weapon that’s landed in the U.S. via American-hating zealots. Is Hollywood tapping into our worst terrors or distancing us from them by placing them on that giant screen of fantasies? Last week it was political potboiler The Sum of
A fantasia of Almodóvar’s trademark hang-ups that nonetheless surpasses his previous outings in scope, structure, and heart, the movie is a marvelous, noir-inspired meditation on love, sex, and identity that pulses with florid passion. It may be the best film of the year. Almodóvar’s narrative is a marvel of temporal-shifting beauty, seamlessly moving back and
The film tells the warped tale of a couple of disillusioned, attractive femmes fatale named Manu and Nadine (former real-life porn actresses Karen Bach and Raffaela Anderson) who generate a perverse sense of pleasure through sexual and homicidal mayhem. The depiction of their downfall is gruesomely chronicled porn actress Manu, a gang rape victim that
First-time director Wych Kaosayananda prefers to go by the shortened Kaos. It’s pronounced “chaos,” and now we know why. Someone test this man for attention deficit disorder, for he can’t go ten minutes without destroying something. And not just lighting it up I mean full on decimation. Ballistic has three or four unrelated, pre-planned action
If you start a movie by telling people how it’s going to end, well, telling us how it gets there better be one hell of a good time. And to be sure, Bandits begins with its ending, but the story leading up to the dramatic finale is just about as lame as they come. Doing
Without paying close attention, one could wander into The Banger Sisters expecting a warm and fuzzy friendship yarn delivered by an Oscar-caliber trio of Goldie Hawn, Susan Sarandon, and Geoffrey Rush. You’d be half right. The cast shows up, but the film substitutes “warm and fuzzy” with vulgar dialogue and gratuitously sexual escapades. This is
How do you make an onscreen relationship between a middle-aged spinster and a 20-something mentally handicapped man sympathetic and believable? That’s the question writer/director Michael Pate no doubt asked himself a million times during the scripting process for “Tim.” Pate ultimately took the minimalist route in this 1979 Australian feature starring Mel Gibson as the
Moore himself says it is the culmination of 20 years of work. All his previous documentaries were all building up towards this latest assault, upon aspects of American society, which he sees as morally wrong, reprehensible and dangerous to the health of the country. Whatever you personally think of Moore, in the light of what
This film has more than a few thrilling moments. It caused my friend to throw her hands over her eyes and gasp, numerous times. I kept looking, but will admit to a few gasps too. Academy Award winning René Zellweger, who plays Emily Jenkins, a caring and devoted social worker, is determined to prove that
