Angels fight in slow motion. Angels show skin in slow motion. And most importantly, Angels explode in slow motion. Thus we have the three immutable laws of the reinvented Charlie’s Angels, that most improbable crossover hit from the 1970s TV show. Alas, what made the original film such a guilty pleasure wears thin in this […]
If you have a special connection to The Catcher in the Rye, and if you can take Road Trip uber-geek DJ Qualls seriously in a dramatic role, then maybe you’ll fall in love with Chasing Holden. Qualls stars as Neil, son of the governer of New York, sent to prep school at the age of
In my mind there are two types of metaphor movies: those that kick and those that scream. Those that scream take their metaphors and make them painfully obvious to the viewer. We can’t help but notice them. Those that kick, on the other hand, have metaphors that are silent and effective. Children of a Lesser
Since the beginning of time (or at least the domestication of animals), the chicken has been man’s feathered enigma. Like so many of its feathered friends, it has fallen into the realm of the metaphor (i.e. “He’s a chicken.”). Unlike so many of its edible counterparts, it has survived the hassles of religious communities unscathed
People (mostly French people, I presume) have called Children of Paradise a French Gone With the Wind. It’s equally epic in scope, but good luck following along. Filled with the haughty arrogance of 1940s France, even the title of Children of Paradise is something of an over your head joke. The gaggle of characters hardly
Take Footloose and Like Water for Chocolate, steep the combo in a heaping helping of corn syrup, and you’ll come out with the sticky, sickly-sweet romantic cautionary tale Chocolat. The Cider House Rules director Lasse Hallström helms this adaptation of the best-selling novel by Joanne Harris, and delivers yet another pretty package of tempered social
A Christmas Story ranks as the best holiday movie ever, better even than It’s a Wonderful Life. Based on the book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash, it’s a period piece set in roughly 1940, telling a series of vignettes about a young boy that’s 9 years old in the weeks leading up
Like the honey-glazed ham around which so much of its story sadly revolves, Christmas with the Kranks is tasty at first but soon congeals into little more than a fatty, gelatinous mess. Based on one of John Grisham’s bestsellers that isn’t about lawyers, Skipping Christmas, the film features the fine directing talents of Joe Roth
”It’s about the facelessness of war!” exclaimed a colleague. “The compositions are stunning, with action going on in the foreground and background. It’s a dynamic and apocalyptic visual experience!” This, to me, is madness. Black Hawk Down has been mistaken, in its bloated self-importance, for being cinematically and politically relevant. Take away its timely guise
Look up trinity in the dictionary and it will tell you that it’s the union of three closely related members. That’s a clever guise for this, the third movie about the half-human, half-vampire Marvel comic book hero named Blade. Yet, the film that’s lurking under this misnomer is remarkably dissimilar to the original spectacle of
