About once a year — twice if we’re lucky — a first-time director gives us something original, electrifying, and humane, a film that shows us a new way to see, that presents complex and memorable people in whom we recognize ourselves. Last year it was Joshua Marston and Maria Full…
It’s almost impossible to watch Roman Polanski’s rendition of Oliver Twist without drawing parallels between the privations endured by the book’s young protagonist and the director’s own brutal boyhood. A Jew raised in Nazi-occupied Poland, Polanski first tackled the Holocaust head-on in his 2002 film The Pianist, but Oliver Twist,…
Desperate Housewives: The Complete First Season (Buena Vista) ABC’s juggernaut drama is made up mostly of elements that have trickled down from HBO: black humor, self-awareness, the radical notion that women over 30 can arouse the national libido. The bonus deleted scenes don’t add much to the story, and behind-the-scenes…
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D (Buena Vista) Anthrax Anthrology: No Hit Wonders (Sanctuary) The Batman: Season 1, Volume 2 (Warner Bros.) Battlestar Galactica: Season One (Universal) Born Into Brothels (ThinkFilm) Brothers (Universal) Cowards Bend the Knee (Zeitgeist) Divan (Zeitgeist) Inside Deep Throat (Universal) It’s All Gone Pete…
By conservative estimate, Tim Burton stands to rake in half a billion dollars at the box office this year, thanks to a childlike chocolate-maker in mauve rubber gloves and, now, to a lively dead girl with marriage on her mind and the timid schlub who falls under her spell. As…
In the tradition of A Beautiful Mind and Good Will Hunting comes Proof, a psychological drama about a math genius and the people who worship, care for, and endure him. Based on the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play by David Auburn, Proof is a strong film with intense focus…
Andrew Niccol’s first two films as writer-director, 1997’s Gattaca and 2002’s S1m0ne, were hollow, sterile sci-fi masquerading as earnest satire: The former told of a near future in which parents could genetically engineer perfect children; the latter proffered an actress who became the most famous and beloved movie star in…
Da Ali G Show: Da Compleet Second Seazon (HBO Home Video) Sacha Baron Cohen is inching closer to Tom Green territory; come this time next year his HBO show is likely to be on the pop-culture junk pile. Which isn’t to say this double-disc set doesn’t hold up — it’s…
When one goes to see a movie called El Crimen Perfecto, it might seem unlikely that the title of this Spanish film has been altered for American audiences. But it has — in Spain the title is Crimen Ferpecto, which makes the crime a general term rather than one specific…
The Blues Brothers 25th Anniversary Edition (Universal Studios Home Video) Dan Aykroyd and John Goodman’s modern-day revival of the Blues Brothers is less a stroke of comedy genius than a dose of karaoke night at Hooters. Fight off those thoughts and pop in this 1980 classic. John Belushi and Aykroyd,…
Barn of the Naked Dead (Koch Vision Entertainment) The Bela Lugosi Collection (Universal) Bruce Springsteen: VH1 Storytellers (Sony Music) Charmed: The Complete Second Season (Paramount) Crash (Artisan) The Deer Hunter: Special Edition (Universal) Dragnet: Volumes 1-3 (Delta Music) Fat Albert’s Halloween Special (Ventura) Fraggle Rock: Season 1 (Hit Entertainment) Greta…
A rich family returns to its nice home after a vacation, but something isn’t quite right. The place has been … burgled? No, not quite. The stereo that’s missing — it’s in the fridge. The chairs have been stacked into a tower. And there’s a note attached: “Your days of…
The Exorcism of Emily Rose, which is based on a true story the same way Harry Potter and Star Wars movies are, is the latest — though certainly not the last — movie of this bloody (awful) year trying to scare the money right out of your wallet. It has…
At the opening of The Constant Gardener, Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles’s adaptation of the novel by John Le Carré, we hear a conversation before we see it. The screen remains black, still running credits, as a man and a woman negotiate a departure. Slowly the scene dawns, revealing the couple…
Viewers of those VH1 nostalgia countdown shows are familiar with the term awesomely bad, denoting a song one hates to love because it’s unintentionally tacky and awful, yet there’s something about it that won’t let you dismiss it entirely. It’s also a fine way to describe The Cave, but chances…
Ain’t nothing in this world more tedious than highbrow erotica, which works itself into a lather and then wipes off the sweat before anyone notices how awfully and inappropriately worked-up it got. Asylum, adapted by Closer’s Patrick Marber and Chrysanthy Balis from the novel by Patrick McGrath, is just that…
Remember Nick Cannon? For a while there he seemed to be the next big young heartthrob, right after starring in the marching-band movie Drumline and the remake of the Eighties comedy Love Don’t Cost a Thing. When Dave Chappelle joked that his son was leaving him for Nick Cannon, people…
I always cannot understand why girls don’t wanna be with me for a long time,” says Timothy Treadwell, subject of the documentary Grizzly Man. “I have really a nice personality — I’m fun, I’m very, very good in the … umm, well, you’re not supposed to say that when you’re…
Terry Gilliam’s last film featured the former Monty Python troupe member as an eccentric, demanding, and difficult director prone to destroying his ambitious projects before a single frame of footage was ever shot. “If it’s easy,” he says in the movie, “I don’t do it.” Alas, this was not a…
Sure you want to be inside Sophie Jacobs’s head? The poor woman’s cabeza is so stuffed with guilt and fear, so tormented by grief and what might be delusions, that to spend even five minutes in there poses an obvious risk to your own sanity. At least that’s the way…
Red Eye may not seem to be your typical Wes Craven movie. It’s not really horror, there are no marketable monsters, and unlike Cursed, Scream 3, and other recent Craven offerings, it’s actually an enjoyable time at the movies. But heroine Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams) is very much in the…
The contentedly independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch has brought his restless energy to a series of surreal road movies that move nicely along on the strength of rare characters, quirky humor, and a willing embrace of chance adventure. These quest stories for hipsters have transported Jarmusch’s fiercely loyal audience from New…
