A fourth Rambo? The question isn’t why; it’s what took him so long. Was America’s avenging angel of meat just planning to sit out Fallujah and what we’re cooking up for Iran and Syria? (Oops — pretend that last part was redacted.) Okay, sure, last time we saw John Rambo,…
Faithful in style and spirit to the award-winning novel by Brian Morton, Andrew Wagner’s wise, observant, and exquisitely tacit chamber piece complicates every May-December, academic-novel cliché. A mutually dependent relationship unfolds between Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella), an old-school writer of the Bellow-Roth-Howe generation of realists; and Heather (Six Feet Under’s…
The King of Kong (New Line) Seth Gordon’s best-of-2007 documentary, about the battle for Donkey Kong supremacy, remains a work in progress: Billy Mitchell, the longtime title-holder dethroned by Steve Wiebe over the course of this hysterical, thrilling, and occasionally sad little film, recently reclaimed the throne — and Wiebe…
Perhaps the most oft-quoted line from Zack Snyder’s cinematic adaptation of the Frank Miller graphic novel 300 is “Tonight we dine in Hell!” Chowing down on a box of Butterfinger minis during a screening of Meet the Spartans, you will truly understand what that means. You remember 300, right? A…
Three dimensions seem scarcely enough to contain the messianic impulses of the world’s hardest-rocking humanitarian aid project, and in this concert extravaganza, U2 finally gets a format scaled to its ambitions: the four-story IMAX screen, with 3-D technology tossed in to boot. Except for the eerie moment when Bono pleads…
Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s Sugar, which premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival (and was inexplicably shut out at the closing-night awards ceremony), gets as much right about baseball as any movie I’ve ever seen. It gets the hum of the electric lights in…
Aqua Teen Hunger Force: 5 (Warner Bros.) Barn of the Naked Dead (Legend House) Bordertown (THINKFilm) Canvas (Universal) Chancer: Series 2 (Acorn Media) The Comebacks (Fox) Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Complete Sixth Season (HBO) Daddy Day Camp (Sony) Damages: The Complete First Season (Sony) Drumline: Special Edition (Fox) El Cid:…
Youth Without Youth, Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed return to the fray, is a curious project — well-crafted, personal, and movie-movie old-fashioned even in its vanguard aspirations. Simply put, it’s a Faustian romance about the reversal of time and transmigration of souls that, shot mainly in Romania, adds a soupçon of…
What I want to say about the death of Heath Ledger is … nothing. No speculation about why he committed suicide, if he committed suicide. No comment on the chronology, the circumstances, the known facts or lurid details of his passing. No outrage at the ghoulish gathering outside his SoHo…
America! The Complete Series (RHI) Barney Miller: The Complete Second Season (Sony) Best Actress Collection (Fox) Best Picture Collection (Fox) Blonde Ambition (Sony) Butterfly Collectors (Koch Vision) The Catherine Cookson Anthology (Koch Vision) ER: The Complete Eighth Season (Warner Bros.) The Game Plan (Disney) Hawaii Five-O: The Third Season (Paramount)…
Confessions of a Superhero (Arts Alliance) As one of those quoted on the package (“A more beautiful documentary you’re unlikely to find”), I can only reiterate my earlier praise: Matt Ogens’s doc, about mortals dressed as superheroes trolling Hollywood Boulevard for tourists’ loose change, is stunning to look at —…
Regarding the irrelevance of Untraceable: First of all, torture is so 2007, and just because this drab little thriller with a flashy love of pain imagines itself a “critique of violence” doesn’t make it any less superfluous. Second of all, untraceable? Ha! You wish. Although it’s true the villain of…
Persepolis is a small landmark in feature animation. Not because of technical innovation — though it has a handcrafted charm forgotten in the era of CGI-toon juggernauts — but because it translates an introspective, true-to-life, “adult” comic story into moving pictures. With the aid of French comic-book artist Vincent Paronnaud,…
Alex Haley’s Queen (Warner Bros.) Amazing Planet Earth (Questar) The Attic (Allumination) Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown (Warner Bros.) Breaker Morant (Image) Extras: The Complete Series (HBO) Dora the Explorer: Undercover Dora (Paramount) DragonLance: Dragons of the Autumn Twilight (Paramount) Good Luck Chuck (Lionsgate) In the Heat of the Night:…
If Diane Keaton were a comer in 2007, she’d likely be stuck in romantic comedies cooked up in movie studio test kitchens. No Godfather for her. No Annie Hall, no Shoot the Moon, no Reds. Filmmakers who now use Katherine Heigl as their go-to girl would be flummoxed by the…
Jonathan Demme, who directed Tom Hanks to an Oscar as the AIDS-afflicted lawyer in Philadelphia, might be the most well-meaning filmmaker in Hollywood. Jimmy Carter, winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human…
Like the Muppet movies, Jewish films depend largely on their locations to sell themselves. Instead of Manhattan, the Jews in Harley, Son of David take Washington, D.C., on the backs of motorcycles. In Cheese Head — My First Ghetto, it’s Kingston, Jamaica; in Cabul in Kabul, it’s Afghanistan; and in…
Family Guy Presents: Blue Harvest (Fox) As someone with no use for Seth MacFarlane’s potty-mouthed Simpsons rip, I’ll admit to choking out a few giggles during his Star Wars sendup — though, truth be told, it’s slightly less daring than Spaceballs and, sure, Porn Wars. Stunningly faithful to the 30-year-old…
Joshua (Fox) George Ratliff’s movie, a sort of satirical take on Rosemary’s Baby, came and went upon its release; seems no one got the joke about how parents (Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga, in this case) are scared shitless of their own children — especially the titular Joshua, played by…
Since promising Armageddon in the leadoff bars of Straight Outta Compton, star/producer Ice Cube has been one canny career man. In recent years he has pulled up stake in the foundering rap game and doesn’t seem to think twice about the cred damage that could come from pratfalling through PG…
First: Just register the laziness of that title. All right. The Inspiring True Story behind Great Debaters is the 1930s championship streak of East Texas’s all-black Wiley College debate team, coached by poet and teacher Melvin B. Tolson. This bit of historicity is the excuse for an educational tour of…
The All New Super Friends Hour: Season One, Volume One (Turner) American Carny: True Tales From the Circus Sideshow (Koch Vision) Cary Grant: 4-Disc Collector’s Set (Republic) Casablanca (Warner Bros.) Death Sentence (Fox) Eagle vs. Shark (Miramax) Evil Roy Slade (TMG) Golden Door (Miramax) Happy Tree Friends: Complete Season One…
