You know how boys love to play soldier? How they get stern-faced and march out to destroy an enemy whom they believe needs destroying? Well, actors are into that too. Sometimes they soldier on even when Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson isn’t around to help them frown determinedly. Such is…
Director David Cronenberg has led his loyal fans down some pretty spooky corridors, including the telepathic netherworld of Scanners, the violent sibling rivalry of twin gynecologists in love with the same woman (Dead Ringers), and the drug-haunted imagination of William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch). So it comes as no surprise…
In nature, living things prey upon each other all the time. Humanity, on the other hand, has a choice. It is flouting this choice that excites director Gaspar Noé. In his latest project, Irréversible, he basically swipes Christopher Nolan’s backward-narrative structure from Memento to tell a lurid tale of rape…
Lawrence Kasdan directs and co-writes (with William Goldman) Dreamcatcher, the latest addition to the Stephen King adaptation genre, currently at 74, including film and TV, and counting. Taking the Internet Movie Database as a source, this puts King handily ahead of Michael Crichton (23) and Bram Stoker (38), closing in…
Adolf Hitler killed his own dog. Most of his other evil is well documented now, and words alone are inadequate anyway, so let’s begin by considering this comparatively microscopic offense. For the many who shower their canines with at least as much affection as they offer other human beings (and…
When Neil Burger’s debut as feature-film writer and director, Interview with the Assassin, was being shopped around, it had many intrigued but few interested enough to buy it for distribution. The theory goes that some distributors, among them Miramax, felt its subject matter was a bit off post-September 11; they…
This is a story with a happy ending, because, so far, nothing bad has happened to indicate otherwise. There are no ratings to sweat over, no network executives to fight with, no cancellations to suffer through. The rough territories lie ahead, over the horizon of 8:30 p.m. this Sunday, when…
Ever since Amores Perros burst onto the international scene two years ago, Latin American cinema has been experiencing one of the most fertile periods in its history. Encompassing such works as Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También and Walter Salles’s Behind the Sun, these socially conscious, frequently brutal portraits of…
Hitler as artist … Hitler as artist … Damn. So much for the ol’ “summarize plot, tease overpaid actors, pontificate wildly” formula. Reviewing Max — about the wonder years of Der Führer (Noah Taylor) and his eponymous, fictional Jewish benefactor Max Rothman (John Cusack) — looks to be something of…
This should really piss you off: What follows is a story about a very funny movie you will have absolutely no chance of seeing any time soon. The powers that be who distribute movies–who copy prints, print up posters, deliver them to theaters, collect receipts, split profits (well…)–do not want…
The 2003 Miami International Film Festival is in full swing, with four nights remaining for the marathon run of features, documentaries, and shorts from all over the world. Tonight, however, is the last night to experience “Beachstock,” the series of free screenings on the beach at Nikki Beach: Victor/Victoria, a…
Tony Grisoni can always tell when his old friend Terry Gilliam, the visionary who sees too far for his own good, is in pain: He laughs. The worse the pain, the harder the laughter. If that is the case, then the Terry Gilliam seen throughout Lost in La Mancha, Keith…
There’s a lot of goodwill out there for this year’s Miami International Film Festival to succeed, and there’s a lot out there this year to see. With 65 features, plus shorts and documentaries — playing at three theaters — you would well deserve an Olympian award if you caught them…
It was supposed to be make-believe, a disturbing but ultimately uplifting work of science-fiction from a celebrated author of grim futurama and glorious fantasy. The subject matter of Orbiter, a hardback graphic novel about a spaceship that disappears for years and returns sheathed in skin after visits to faraway places…
Some filmmakers use documentaries to explore complex subjects. Others use docs to ram home their own agendas. That’s certainly the case with The Trials Of Henry Kissinger, a fast-paced, 80-minute exposé that is more an accusation than an examination. Directed by Eugene Jarecki and written by Alex Gibney, Kissinger lays…
While virtually no one in this country foresaw the American disaster in Vietnam, the late British writer Graham Greene glimpsed it with astonishing clarity a decade before the first U.S. “advisor” set foot on Vietnamese soil. Greene’s 1955 novel The Quiet American, which has now been made into a disturbing…
Astaire & Rogers. Hepburn & Tracy. Heck, Ball & Arnaz, Houston & Washington, or Vardalos & Corbett. Over the decades Hollywood has proved that its romantic comedies needn’t suck. But alas, they often do, as is the case with How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Clearly, bigwig co-producers…
Rawson Thurber has been so busy the past few days that by the time he finally returns a reporter’s phone call, he does so at 1:30 in the morning–and he doesn’t even realize the late, or early, hour till he hears the groggy croak on the other end. He’s sorry…
Last October, Sue Vertue found herself in a Los Angeles soundstage watching the filming of a pilot for a would-be NBC sitcom. The storyline of this particular episode dealt, more or less, with the horrific (and, of course, capital-H hilarious!) fallout that comes when a man’s girlfriend finds his porn…
First off, make no mistake: Biker Boyz is not, and has no intentions of being, The Fast and the Furious on two wheels, which will be considered a serious shame by the twelve-to-twelve-year-old demographic who were hoping to chug a little more Diesel fuel till the official sequel’s release this…
It used to be that the only Korean films to be seen in the U.S. were somber art-house films like Jeong Ji-yeong’s White Badge or veteran Im Kwon-Taek’s Chunhyang and Sopyonje. But as South Korea has developed a more technically sophisticated commercial film industry, these have been joined by hard-edged,…
Just when a cynic might think there are no more Holocaust stories to be told, yet another undiscovered perspective pops up on local screens. But even if you’ve seen The Pianist and The Fighter and Night and Fog, there is still Shanghai Ghetto, a documentary by Dana Janklowicz-Mann and Amir…
