The problem with Spartan isn’t so much that it’s mediocre, but that it could be a whole lot better. Unlike writer-director David Mamet’s last movie, Heist, a film with such a generic plot and predictable Gene Hackman performance that it never had a chance, Spartan has a reasonably compelling story…
For the record, this article is NOT about Andy Warhol. I repeat: Neither Andy Warhol nor his “films” will be featured in the following story. Rather, this article is all about the filmmaker Paul Morrissey. Never mind that Andy Warhol’s name appears in large bold type all over and preceding…
Maybe the most amazing thing about the big-screen version of Starsky & Hutch is how much smaller it feels than its predecessor, the William Blinn-created, Aaron Spelling-produced cop series that ran on ABC from 1975 to 1979. Everything about this cineplex variation feels rinky-dink, like some extended variety-show skit that…
At its best, the Winter Music Conference is a sprawling six-day party in the gentle Miami winter with 10,000 of your closest friends and the greatest DJs in the world, all found on a two-mile stretch of sandy beach. At its worst, WMC is a sprawling, disorganized, and overpriced mass…
At first glance Hidalgo seems to be nothing more than an old-fashioned, flat-footed adventure epic plunked down on a vast stretch of desert and amply furnished with the usual Hollywood conventions — a strong, silent cowboy on horseback, a couple of villains with nasty black mustaches, a killer sandstorm, and…
This Jew has spent several hours in the past week reading all four Gospels, as well as various supplementary (and often inflammatory) texts, upon which Mel Gibson based his The Passion of the Christ. I’ve read the interpretations of scholars, the apologias of popes, and the damnations of zealots. I’ve…
This is not a good movie. Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights is, in fact, a bad movie. The script bleeds one cliché after another, the female lead can’t fire up the heat necessary for her role, and the plot resolves nearly every conflict it introduces within minutes. Worse, even as the…
It is by now clear that Meg Ryan, the bubbling sweetheart of half a dozen romantic comedies, means to bring new substance and seriousness to the latest phase of her career. Witness the lonely New York English teacher she played in last year’s brainy slasher flick, In the Cut: In…
It is so very nice when a movie completely outstrips the expectations conjured by its trailer, as is the case with The Dreamers. At first blush, this tale of three passionate youths caught up in the Parisian counterculture revolution of the Sixties looked downright trite. Never mind that esteemed veteran…
At the opening of The Fog of War, the brilliant new documentary from director Errol Morris, we see a composed, sharply groomed, and middle-age Robert McNamara, preparing to brief the press on the Vietnam War. He asks two questions: First, if the chart he’s set up is visible and, second,…
When the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, consisting of twenty raw college men, beat the seemingly invincible, state-hardened Soviets and went on to win the gold medal at Lake Placid, the event was regarded, even in palm-lined Miami and iceless Honolulu, as the most amazing feat in U.S. Olympic history…
Valentin Childhood memories are part of filmmakers’ stock in trade, and many a director has based films on them — Fellini’s Amarcord, Boorman’s Hope and Glory, and Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso, to name but three. Alejandro Agresti’s Valentin (2002) continues this tradition with the tale of an owlish, bespectacled eight-year-old boy…
Bon Voyage Watching Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s big World War II drama Bon Voyage is like taking a vivid trip back to the middle of the Twentieth Century. This retro journey is not just because of the detailed Art Deco production design or the Nazis versus Free French storyline. The entire ethos…
There is a recent generation of American men who came of age too late for free love and wanton property-grabbing, and too early for postgrunge emotional wankery and info-age immediacy. Stuck on their iceberg, isolated by oceans from anything real like the original punk or Goth movements or Australia’s cinematic…
Behold a tale of true love (between a boy and a bicycle), of tireless courage (from a bitty grandmother with a club foot), and of a very shocking new definition of sexy (three wizened matriarchs who ravenously slurp down frogs). This is The Triplets of Belleville, an animated extravaganza of…
When aspiring independent filmmaker Justin Routt calls you up asking for help on his movie — free help, that is — don’t think that just because the industry outsider has no money, connections, or prior experience in moviemaking, he’ll be easily deterred. On the contrary. Routt has somehow got it…
Not a lot of people know this, but our word “actress” is derived from the Greek phrase strumpetos luckyos, meaning “prostitute who somehow landed an agent.” The reason that this etymological root remains largely unappreciated is that it is entirely fake, fabricated for the present purpose of irritating a lot…
William H. Macy’s plain-vanilla features and hangdog screen demeanor have served him well. Who could resist him as the clueless car dealer who hatched the disastrous kidnapping plot in Fargo, or as the distraught husband of a frisky porn star in Boogie Nights? A splendid character actor with a gift…
This year’s British assault on the Yank funnybone is a spirited, hard-trying farce called Calendar Girls, plucked straight from a 1999 news story and dolled up with all the heartwarming charm we’ve come to expect from recent films made by our former rulers. The film recounts the slightly naughty daring…
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last year — which often seems advantageous — you may have noticed that there’s a pugnacious air of defiance among today’s young women. Far be it from a film critic to attempt an essay on gender studies, but hey, look around:…
Anthony Minghella’s magnificent film version of the Civil War epic Cold Mountain has much more going for it than Hollywood grandeur. Beyond its striking set-pieces and gruesome battle scenes populated with thousands of extras, in addition to its movie-star glamour — Jude Law and Nicole Kidman are like beautiful pieces…
The dispute at the heart of House of Sand and Fog concerns the occupancy of a rundown little bungalow near the northern California coast. It’s not much of a place, really. And to get a glimpse of the Pacific you’d have to climb up to the roof and stand on…
