Jonathan Glazer’s stylish debut Sexy Beast stood out for the uncharacteristically explosive and vicious performance the director coaxed out of stately Ben Kingsley. Evidence of any such energy all but escapes Birth, Glazer’s anticipated follow-up to his kinetic gangster picture. A plodding and pretentious thriller, this beyond the grave affair ends up being too art-house […]
No one will ever accuse documentary filmmaker Michael Moore of being even-handed. In his funny, somber, anti-corporate debut, Roger & Me (1989), and his two, eat the rich style television series, Moore establishes his stance (the humorous left) and then makes his case, swaying all subject matter toward his ideals, and making the opposition look
Boys and Girls plays like a college version of When Harry Met Sally, with just as much fun and fewer contrivances. Here, the key couple is Ryan and Jennifer, who meet by chance on a plane as pre-teens, and continually bump into one another until their lives bisect at Cal-Berkeley. Ryan, played by Flavor of
It was worth every penny. Boys Don’t Cry is the heartbreaking story of Teena Brandon (or Brandon Teena) (Hilary Swank), a young woman with a sexual identity crisis. She wants to be a man but cannot afford an operation. So, not content to live as a woman and definitely not comfortable with a sexual identity
Mel Gibson deserves a lot more credit than I’ve been giving him. A few years ago, no one could have conceived that the action star could pull off the lead role in a dazzling, epic, historical adventure thriller romance, let alone direct it. But he does, making Braveheart a vastly entertaining and powerful film. Gibson
A befuddled attempt to give Vin Diesel his own franchise series now that he’s ditched giving the XXX thing another whirl The Chronicles of Riddick stomps onto screens with an attitude that’s somehow both obtuse and far too simplistic. This sequel of sorts to writer/director David Twohy’s Pitch Black takes one of that film’s sole
Forgiveness is a thing most people long for in their lives. Forgiveness represents a silent and indescribable object that opens doors of acceptance and slams shut avenues of obsession. It is a delicate object that is difficult to find in people and their actions. What amazes me is how the slightest gesture, vision, or tragedy
I didn’t even know how to pronounce the title. It could’ve been “The cider house-rules,” meaning “This is the cider house, and these are the rules.” Or it could’ve been “The cider house rules!” meaning “That cider house is damn cool!” Wiser readers have probably already figured out that the former is correct, and while
It’s been a while since I’ve anticipated a film this greatly and been let down so much by the actual product. Filmed from Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor’s extremely entertaining script, Citizen Ruth had a lot to live up to. Of course, in some ways, it does, and in some, it doesn’t. Geez, you’d think
The long awaited follow up to Delicatessen is another surrealist adventure into the questionably sane minds of French creators Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro. It’s been four years since that film, and their new picture, The City of Lost Children, is twice as strange and almost as good. A twist on the typical fairy tale,
