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 […]
There are two kinds of roller coasters. The most modern kind uses maglev technology to take you from 0 to 100mph in a matter of seconds. The old-school kind slowly creeps you up an incline before letting gravity pull you down at sickening speeds. Collateral is definitely the latter, and actually delivers more in the
Comedians are not funny people. If we’re to believe Christian Charles’ aptly-titled documentary, they’re obsessive, jealous, self-loathing, analytical and petty. Remember, dying is easy and comedy is hard. Two paths are followed in Comedian. On one, a comic on the verge of success named Orny Adams receives what could be a career-defining break. On the
Released in 1991, The Commitments was Alan Parker’s third film about pop music. His first, Fame, was a frothy coming of age musical that made the most of its youthful enthusiasm despite a disease of the week style script. The second, Pink Floyd: The Wall, was a depressive, insular, and angular pastiche of moody myth-making
Thank you, Robert Altman. Coming fast on the heels of one of the worst moviegoing years of recent memory, The Company appears like a wondrous beacon of light. (It even trumps Altman protégé Alan Rudolph’s clear-eyed ode to middle class challenges, The Secret Lives of Dentists.) Altman casts his gaze upon the Joffrey Ballet of
Sam Rockwell (best known for show-stealing turns in Charlie’s Angels and Galaxy Quest) makes for an engaging and wildly funny doppelganger for Barris, owning the character so completely it’s hard to tell where the source material ends and Rockwell’s interpretation picks up. With Barris appearing in almost every scene, the film takes us down his
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Amy Heckerling, director of the now classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High, after free-falling through Look Who’s Talking and its (first) sequel, has turned in an unquestionably dismal look at the wealthy teen’s life in the mid-’90s. But this ain’t no 90210. Starring Alicia Silverstone and a gaggle of
Classic action director John Woo, redeeming himself for making a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie (Hard Target) in 1992, proves himself capable in the Hollywood arena of big explosions with this stylish story. Broken Arrow is your (very) basic action/adventure featuring an air force pilot gone mad (John Travolta), the sidekick (Christian Slater) who tries to
Brutal. Ugly. Predictable. Boring. Stereotypical. Comical. Violent. Lethargic. Seven words to describe the hellish cinema experience of The Brotherhood of the Wolf. Alas, I forgot two more epitaphs: disappointing and plagiaristic. The Brotherhood of the Wolf has all of the makings of a great French epic. Dashing leading men including Vincent Cassel (The Crimson Rivers),
A family of Irish Catholics living in New York, their stories explore living a morally upright life in the 90s, dealing with failed romances, and the timeless question of how to commit. Jack (Jack Mulcahy), the only married brother, is tempted by another woman. Patrick (Mike McGlone) is torn between committing to his long-time girlfriend
