Ask David Lynch, and he will tell you apple-pie America just isn’t what it seems. People behave strangely, sometimes violently, and sometimes they even transform into different people without being polite enough to warn you first. Eerie and freaky, shot through with sporadic bursts of humor and sex, Mulholland Drive…

Here you’ll find madness, mayhem, and murder in no short supply. The Hughes brothers, Albert and Allen, have always had a knack for horror, as evidenced by their edgy gangster flicks, Menace II Society and Dead Presidents, which they’ve stated were influenced by the styles of Brian De Palma and…

A quarter-century after C.W. McCall’s smash novelty single “Convoy,” a generous spirit still exists out there for our 18-wheeled good buddies. But consider the less catchy flip side of that single, “Long, Lonesome Road,” and its lament of a maddeningly grim and endless horizon. It’s within this uniquely American wasteland…

Lacking the good taste to postpone the release of this silly thriller until a less volatile time in American history (assuming one ever comes), the producers of Don’t Say a Word have opted to foist upon us images of detonating New York City buildings, carefully calculated acts of violence, and…

When marching-band director Tyrone Brown asks his Jackie Robinson Steppers, “Are you motivated?” he’s not so much inquiring as presenting a challenge. In the middle of a sweltering summer in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, tensions, temptations, and distractions are omnipresent. Synchronizing 60 players (while diverting some of them from becoming…

Festering somewhere between an after-school special and kiddie porn lies this frank but melodramatic open wound from veteran Canadian director Léa Pool (Emporte-moi). Adapted by Judith Thompson from Susan Swan’s novel The Wives of Bath, Lost and Delirious is about girl joy and girl sorrow, girl solidarity and girl insatiability…

Cuddly outsider #63178D, please step forward. Well, my goodness, you are so alternative, so fringe, so punk! So artsy and alienated! So utterly aimless and oozing with angst! That’s one reaction a viewer might have to Thora Birch’s power-moping in Ghost World, the new collaboration between director Terry Zwigoff (Crumb,…

The title Apocalypse Now Redux is fairly amusing. Think about it: Prophetic Disclosure Presently Shows Up Again Newfangled. Of course, in the ten years since the release of Hearts of Darkness, the documentary on the making of Apocalypse Now, we’ve been taught to revere the legend of Francis Ford Coppola…

In a year inundated with massive movies, it’s a pleasant surprise to note that a truly spectacular adventure has arrived in the form of a Disney cartoon called Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Gushing aside, let us now consider the Atlanteans, the mythic race that codirectors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise…

Remember glee? Perhaps not, given our penchant in recent times to chuck giddy hearts aside in favor of being stupid, obnoxious, and mean. But hey, it’s all right, because the fizzy, caffeinated beverage known as Baz Luhrmann seeks to re-create this elusive emotion for all of us in the form…

Let us first in olden verse this critic’s cynical curse disperse: The greet unwashede consummeth crappe, Fro Jerrye Springgere to ganggsta rappe; Bothe yonge and olde, ’tis sore pitee, Doth foule thir hertes with drede teevee, So slye produceres, with bisynesse cunning, Devysde a shew to pyne come running Consummeres…

Presently sitting in a very peaceful meditational facility. First time here. The location (which shall remain unnamed so as to maintain nondenominational vibe) was selected specifically for the loving creation of this review, as it provides an almost perfect contrast to The Center of the World, the new motion picture…

Visualize a pretty young woman and a handsome young man heading for the bedroom. She has just suggested that she wants to show him what she really wants, so naturally he begins unzipping his trousers en route to the bed. Oblivious to his loud boxers, she sits and begins swooning…

“Keep a diary, and one day it’ll keep you,” said Mae West, and while the sentiment rings true, it does little to explain the mystery of why Helen Fielding’s sliver of literary history managed to keep anyone. Fluffy, shrill, and approximately as deep as Cosmo magazine, the book somehow hit…

There’s a majesty to Michael Winterbottom’s new film, a majesty and a terrible, icy chill. There’s also a fair bit of invention, as the director of the wrenching Jude — based on Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure — has shifted the locus of that author’s fierce, beloved English west country…

Hello, what’s this? Why, could it be another cautionary tale from Hollywood about recreational drugs being — alert the media! — not particularly good for people? (If only they could try the same with guns. Messrs. Heston and Silver: You awake yet?) Indeed Blow director Ted Demme (Beautiful Girls, Monument…

We can run, we can hide, we can even try switching theaters, but there’s just no escaping that pesky Gene Hackman. He starred in The Conversation, he is ubiquitous, and revere him we must — virtually every single time we go to the movies. (Robyn Hitchcock even has a song…

The doomed are often a remarkably energetic and productive lot, especially when it comes to creating portraits of their personal horrors. Themes vary in intensity between slow self-destruction and grand devastation, but in vampirism the full spectrum of ghastliness may be covered, because the imbalance represents so much to so…

Something weird is definitely going on in the British pop scene. Years after tasteful Yanks allowed classic works such as Saturday Night Fever and Grease to dissolve into our vast iconic array, villainous limey programmers were still hyping them over there. Thus the dual plagues of disco and ’50s rock…

This cinematic bonbon has all the ingredients required to spin an audience into the throes of fuzzy warmheartedness — the hope, the compassion, the joie de vivre — blended with the skill of a consummate confectioner. Much like a box of sweets with a convenient guide inside the lid, Lasse…

Assessing the merits of Quills, the lusty new feature by director Philip Kaufman (Henry and June), it’s tempting to seek correlative characters from popular movies in order to illustrate just how radical this business is not. In Kaufman’s film — affectionately built upon a screenplay by Doug Wright, who adapts…

So many elements make up a boyhood, from joyful laughter and games, to purloined porno mags and pointless aggression, to the scary realization that something vital is slipping away, something that may never be reclaimed. Naturally nostalgic reflections on this magical time form the basis of countless films, with two…