Refreshingly, the biggest wonder about the new Arnold Schwarzenegger ride is not that human cloning has become a reality, nor that the America of the future (“sooner than you think,” as an opening caption ominously suggests) very closely resembles present-day Vancouver, Canada. It’s not even that technological advances appear to…
With global overpopulation neatly intertwining with the advent of the home video camera, we have been afforded, as a species, several near-miracles. For instance, when supersonic jets explode or when mobs impolitely loot and riot in urban centers, the common consumer can now document the event and sell it to…
It takes a special kind of mindset to celebrate castration, and audiences confusing feminine empowerment with the crude hacking off of seemingly oppressive huevos are certain to get a bang out of Girlfight, the gritty debut feature from writer-director Karyn Kusama. Metaphoric or otherwise, there’s already a movie about deballing…
I had this idea that these ritual pubic-hair shavings which take place in the play could be made into murders, so I called up Charles, and we had a meeting of the minds and worked out the story of the film.” This is the sort of answer you get when…
By day they drive their rippling torsos beneath the blinding desert sun, pausing intermittently to gaze sexily into the distance. By night they head for the open-air discos of Djibouti to get squiffy with the locals. When time allows they wash their socks, shave, and wander around in cylindrical white…
There are so many intense themes running rampant in Joe Charbanic’s debut feature, The Watcher, that it’s tricky to keep up. For instance there’s the ominous notion that a young lady who lives alone with her cat is pretty much doomed. Then there’s the gripping premise that borrowing from nihilistic…
“Be cool, get chicks.” While that’s paraphrased and boiled down, it’s nonetheless the essential creed of Dex (Donal Logue), the corpulent connoisseur of carnality who lumbers through this debut feature from Jenniphr Goodman as if he’s Paul Bunyan and every woman in sight is a tree. Overweight and underemployed, Dex…
Rather than asking if this senseless and expensive new film from wunderkind entertainer Robert Zemeckis is devoid of merit (it is), or “worth seeing” (it isn’t), we should instead take the movie’s title — What Lies Beneath — as a direct question. Indeed, what does lie beneath? Possible answers include:…
Murphy and Pryor. Skywalker and Kenobi. Amos and Zeppelin. Regardless of the creative universe, the maverick apprentice tends to stride off into territory beyond the edges of the master’s map. So it is with Alan Rudolph, whose career blossomed after serving as assistant director to Robert Altman on Nashville in…
About nine years ago, in a humble Southern California nightclub, urbane British folksinger Billy Bragg reappraised 20th-century politics — as is often his socialist wont — by means of an intriguing correlation. Might it be, he postulated, that contemporaries Leon Trotsky and Harlan Sanders were not merely striking doppelgängers but…
Apart from mass cultural annihilation, beatniks, Hee Haw, and some dumb-ass sports, most pop-culture trends are not homegrown but imported to America after prolonged cultivation overseas. Take that novelty food tofu, for instance, dubbed le curd du soy by uncredited Belgian sailors exploring China centuries before 1958, when the little…
There is a killing late in Gladiator, Ridley Scott’s new heroic epic, and it is one of those wonderfully cathartic extinguishings that make a wide-eyed audience rise and cheer. After several brutal battles, after much bloodshed, after considerable suffering both needless and entertaining, a blade finds its mark, and a…
Go get a few grains of salt to accompany these observations of tenable consistency and enduring potential: The movie industry is run by big kids; nifty sci-fi trickery may distract an audience from emotional shoals; cops and criminals are divided by a fine line; nostalgia and evil are cheaper by…
Beats, please. Claudia Schiffer, Claudia Schiffer, makes a fellow want to lean in close and sniff her. Putting up a gender fight in Black and White, she turns her tail on any man who’d treat her right. Rianne Eisler-esque, twaddle-spewing supermodel, into the arms of bad boys she’ll wantonly waddle…
The gun is a coward’s weapon, always has been, always will be. Likening it to the sword is like equating rape to romance. However, for reasons that can be attributed only to collective insanity, Hollywood absolutely loves to romanticize the gun, serving as an adjunct advertising agency for the firearms…
O! Sweet vulture of love! Picking through the bones and sinew of doe-eyed fools the world around! How exquisite is thy rending, how blissful the release! Spirits in crimson rivulets swirled, souls as carrion shredded! Two vibrant hearts made still as one, to sate thy gnashing beak! Blessed bloody bird,…
Calling the subject matter of Errol Morris’ latest documentary, Mr. Death, “unpleasant” is like referring to the lavatory on a tuna boat as “lightly scented.” The director who brought us the zany Americana of Fast, Cheap and Out of Control and the lukewarm Stephen Hawking snoozer, A Brief History of…
Step right up, youth of the world, and receive the Boomer inoculation that is Wonder Boys, the first feature from director Curtis Hanson since his much-lauded adaptation of James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential. Then marvel at Michael Douglas showing off his wide spectrum of inert doldrums and tedious self-pity. Thrill to…
Ewan McGregor. You can’t toss a caber in Scotland these days without toppling a gaggle of blokes who closely resemble him. Yet some magical combination of talent, charm, and shrewd management has thrown wide the gates of choice projects for the young superstar, whose résumé already glows like a career…
Ah, boxing. Beating and being beaten about the head and torso until one of two bruised and bloodied humans drops. Clever sport. Tops even American football for sheer poetic elegance. So it’s not surprising — and this is only half sarcastic — that so many fine films have been made…
The evening of March 14, 1885, was an auspicious one in the annals of musical theater. Less than four years had passed since the opening of London’s Savoy Theatre, built specifically for the productions of librettist William Schwenk Gilbert and composer Arthur Seymour Sullivan. The partners’ first six works had…
Boo hoo! Frank McCourt had a miserable childhood! Honestly, who can say his or her childhood wasn’t impoverished in some way… or in many ways? That Mr. McCourt survived and eventually published his inescapable memoir is nice, of course, and the book is indeed a poignant and crafty piece of…
