Quiet, small-scale, and self-contained dramas such as Antwone Fisher can be powered in one direction or another by the smallest detail. For title character (and real person) Fisher (Derek Luke), a sailor serving in the U.S. Navy, it’s an ill-advised fistfight with a fellow officer that sparks his emotional odyssey. The outburst is sudden, swift, […]
I scarcely know where to start writing about Apollo 13, the long awaited story of the catastrophic 13th mission of the Apollo space program. I went in expecting a whole lot from Howard and his star studded cast (Tom Hanks, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Paxton), and they delivered in full, the
Life must be a nonstop party at the old Egoyan homestead. Our pal Atom comes home, tired from a long day’s work, sits down for dinner with his wife Arsinée Khanjian, and finally they retire to the living room where they get to discuss Armenia at length. Atom Egoyan, the avant-garde Canadian filmmaker born in
Thrillers can be really bad. When was the last time you saw a good thriller? It takes sound acting, a creative premise and most of all, suspense. Arlington Road, the new film starring Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins, has a paranoia factor set in. There are many moments in this movie where I felt paranoid
After screening Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) before a sold-out crowd at the New York Museum of Modern Art, filmmakers Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn answered an audience member’s question with obvious chagrin. While the film had collected six Genie awards (Canada’s Oscars), including prizes for Best Film, Best Direction, and Best Screenplay, Cohn noted that
Starting right with its cover shot of demure Japanese model Eihi Shiina wearing a chemical-safe, black rubber glove and clutching an enormous syringe, we know we’re in for something extremely wrong with Takashi Miike’s Audition. And in a way, that’s the problem. Audition starts out as the sweetest little love tragedy you can imagine. Poor
Goldmember finds Mike Myers returning to his most successful franchise, but desperately running out of steam and resorting to yet another stab at jokes that hit-and-missed the first two times around. Goldmember is probably the worst in the Austin Powers series (though I really enjoyed the second one I didn’t think the original was all
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
