With preternatural good looks, a Spice Girl for a wife, and an uncanny ability to kick a soccer ball and make it land wherever he wants, David Beckham is one of the biggest stars of British sports. The soccer player was nice enough to lend his name to Bend It Like Beckham, a spirited, good-natured […]
The main problem with making a sequel to the original Apes was that Charlton Heston didn’t want to put the loincloth back on to keep the struggle going against those damn, dirty apes. So Richard Zanuck, the producer of the original Apes, asked Heston personally to return to the role as some kind of karmic
When is somebody going to scare the shit out of us again? Will the day arrive when I can watch a movie with the same frightened, uneasy feeling I get when I walk through my darkened hallway at midnight? These questions zoom into mind after watching David Twohy’s Below, the latest in a line of
In 1948, director Vittorio De Sica made The Bicycle Thief, the quintessential blueprint of neorealism, a drama widely considered one of the greatest films ever produced. It was shot in the streets of Italy with non-professional actors, and tells about the haves, the have-nots, and the desperate. For the uninitiated, the classic tale is motivated
Years ago, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) turned a chance meeting on a train into a romantic 24 hours wandering the streets of Vienna. At the end of Richard Linklater’s engaging Before Sunrise (1995), the young one-night lovers go their separate ways Jesse back to the U.S. and Celine back to France their
There truly is nothing quite like a Brendan Fraser movie, is there? Encino Man, Dudley Do-Right, Mrs. Winterbourne these are the films that a generation uses to mark the passage of time. It’s nigh time we added another sparkling gem to the 30 picture oeuvre that is The Brendan Fraser Experience and that gem is
Often considered the best animated film ever and the only one to ever be nominated for Best Picture on a return viewing years later, Beauty and the Beast doesn’t seem to be quite the masterpiece we once thought. Dig through the cacophany, though, and you will indeed find one of the better animated experiences of
When Jean Cocteau began to direct Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la bête) in 1946, he was known primarily as a poet and a painter. After the film was released he instantly became one of the finest French directors of his era. As it stands today Beauty and the Beast is still one
It seems like eight years after Short Cuts, everyone decided to try to one up Robert Altman’s slow moving masterpiece. In the space of six months, we have seen the releases of three films that have been Short Cuts esque. First we had Magnolia. Then we had the beautifully photographed yet sluggish 1999 Madeleine. Now
I hate math. I’ve always hated math. It gives me a pounding headache. It would take a miracle to convince me of its value. But A Beautiful Mind has accomplished the impossible after watching the film, I have a new appreciation for math as an art, and for mathematicians as artists. Seldom do movies contain
