In the new Clint Eastwood movie, ordinary young men — husbands and fathers, artisans and aristocrats — are drafted into a war whose motives many of them do not fully understand. There, on an island called Iwo Jima, they fight against an enemy who has been demonized by wartime propaganda…
From the eardrum-shattering shout of “Attention!” that echoes over the opening logo, through to the strobe-lit krump dancing contest that follows, the early scenes of Stomp the Yard are so loud and incoherent that they feel like punishment. After an equally incomprehensible street brawl, director Sylvain White pauses long enough…
The Protector (Genius Products) Thailand’s Tony Jaa has made clear his plan to take Jackie Chan’s crown as the king of Holy crap, did he just do that?! He’s about halfway there. Though Jaa is devoid of Chan’s charisma, his hyperathletic kickboxing style will make your jaw drop; here’s a…
Clerks II (Weinstein) Council of the Gods (First Run) Die You Zombie Bastards (Image) Dreamland (Image) Employee of the Month (Lions Gate) Gridiron Gang (Sony) Grim Reaper (Lions Gate) Her Minor Thing (First Look) La Moustache (Koch Lorber) Lucky Number Slevin (Weinstein) Monroe: Class of ’76 (Image) Pulse (Weinstein) Rotation…
Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, Pan’s Labyrinth is something alchemical. To an astonishing degree, the 42-year-old Mexican filmmaker best known for his contribution to the Blade and Hellboy franchises has transformed the horror of mid-twentieth-century European history into a boldly fanciful example of what surrealists would call le…
Maurice Russell, a septuagenarian actor facing the end of his career and life, gazes raptly at the present that fate has given him: the company of a sullen but strangely desirable teenage girl. At first, his appraising looks give her the creeps, but something about his courtliness piques her curiosity…
Given what an awful stiff Somerset Maugham can be, it’s remarkable how many movies have been made of his uptight tales of civil servants sweating it out in British colonies (48 for the big screen alone). John Curran’s fresh take on Maugham’s novel The Painted Veil, from a crisp script…
Bandidas (Fox) This review is not long enough for a suitable treatment of the beauty of Penélope Cruz and Salma Hayek. The makers of Bandidas would certainly prefer I tried, though, than to discuss this plodding cliché of a western featuring the two. You could write the script right now…
America’s Funniest Home Videos: Salute to Romance (Shout Factory) Behind the Mask (Good Times) Broken Bridges (Paramount) Color of the Cross (Fox) Conversations With Other Women (Hart Sharp) Crank (Lions Gate) Everybody Says I’m Fine (BFS) Good Morning World (S’More) Hello Kitty’s Animation Theater: Complete Collection (ADV) Live Nude Girls…
A multimillion-euro adaptation of a best-selling German novel, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer relates the life of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw), born in eighteenth-century Paris with a uniquely puissant sense of smell. He begins life as an orphan, is sold into servitude to a brutal tanner, but in Toucan…
In a time of darkness, under the evil reign of John Malkovich — who sits upon a throne in a different sound stage from all the other cast members — a hero shall rise. But lo, there will be little rejoicing, for this farmer turned dragon-rider named Eragon is but…
Robert Wilonsky and Jordan Harper recap their top DVDs of 2006: Eraserhead (Absurda/Subversive) — Finally available on DVD, David Lynch’s debut film is as captivating and frustrating as it ever was. The print looks great in its own weird way, and the feature-length doc shows Lynch speaking more clearly about…
History repeats itself: Eleven Decembers ago, Universal had the season’s strongest movie — a downbeat sci-fi flick freely adapted from a well-known source by a name director. With a bare minimum of advance screenings and a shocking absence of hype, the studio dumped it. This year they’ve done it again…
Bankrupt and brain-damaged in Rocky V, a bout fought so long ago that the other Bush was still sucker-punching Saddam, Sylvester Stallone’s titular pugilist returns to issue another beating in Rocky Balboa. How much punishment can an audience take? Even 007 gets his license renewed by younger models every decade,…
Ben Stiller — as usual, frazzled with a touch of hipster frump — is a divorced dad in need of a gig, lest his cutie-pie kid (Jake Cherry) wind up spending all of his time with uptight bond-trading New Dad (Paul Rudd, wasted in a straight-laced cameo). So Stiller’s Larry…
Jackass Number Two: Unrated (Paramount) The sequel to the dumb-ass jamboree makes its predecessor look plain and inoffensive. In short: more puke, more blood, more semen (from a horse, consumed nonetheless), more shit, more piss, more everything till you’d think the Jackasses (Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, etc.) would be…
Airwolf: Season Two (Universal) Be With Me (Film Movement) Dane Cook’s Tourgasm (HBO) Danica (First Look) Factotum (IFC) The Family Values Tour 2006 (Firm Music) Girls Behaving Badly, Volume One (Starlight) Haven (Fox) Mars Invades the Earth! (Alpha) Mi Amigo (Velocity) Mr. Fix It (First Look) The New Adventures of…
It took Norman Mailer seven years and 1282 pages to write 1991’s Harlot’s Ghost: A Novel of the CIA, and if memory serves, it took me twelve years to actually finish it. So director Robert De Niro and screenwriter Eric Roth can be forgiven for taking 2 hours 40 minutes…
It is said that a great actor or actress can “bring down the house,” but before I saw (and heard) the 25-year-old American Idol finalist Jennifer Hudson in the film version of the 1981 Broadway musical Dreamgirls, I couldn’t recall the last time I truly feared for the architectural stability…
Breathe easy: Gary Winick’s new, live-action Charlotte’s Web pic does not screw up one of the seminal works of American children’s literature. In fact the film modernizes this classic tale without losing the gravity and essential dignity of animals grappling with mortality. Winick skillfully undercuts the seriousness of the subject…
When the Levees Broke (HBO) Spike Lee’s four-part doc, easily the best non-fiction film of 2006, gets a fifth part on DVD: a 105-minute epilogue that reveals just how little has changed since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in August 2005. Featuring new interviews with the displaced and displeased,…
About Will Smith’s estimable talents, there is no doubt. Six Degrees of Separation, Ali, … um … the “Parents Just Don’t Understand” video — the man’s got skills to pay the bills, yours and mine and his. That he seldom uses them, or their attendant clout, is dispiriting. This is…
