Forbidden Planet (Warner Bros.) Long available as faded discount product, Fred McLeod Wilcox’s 1956 masterpiece — the movie without which Star Trek, Star Wars, 2001, and, oh, Lost in Space wouldn’t exist — at last gets its proper due; this double-disc collection comes with everything but stardust and rocket fuel…
Publisher: Square Enix
Platform: PlayStation 2
Price: $49.99
ESRB Rating: T (for Teen)
Score: 7 (out of 10)
Brothers of the Head (IFC) Cary Grant: The Franchise Collection (Universal) CSI: The Complete Sixth Season (Paramount) Cream: Royal Albert Hall (Rhino) 49 Up (First Run) Friends: The Complete Series Collection (Warner Bros.) The Green Mile: Two-Disc Special Edition (Warner Bros.) Hate Crime (Image) He Changed Our World: Steve Irwin…
Every populated region has its own subcultures, and one of Fort Lauderdale’s friendliest is the bears – you know, those buff gay men that you just want to cuddle? They’re great for the community, because while they look like tough, muscle-bound bodyguards, they are more likely to throw themselves in…
Once an actor gets big enough to take whatever kind of role he wants, it makes sense that the biggest stretch imaginable, given his current situation, is the part of a powerless man with no control over the world around him. Call it a “nice” movie — a vehicle designed…
Sharkwater. Even if you don’t completely buy into the premise of this riveting documentary — that sharks are among the most misunderstood creatures on the planet — it’s hard to argue with its assertions that sharks are a crucial component in the marine food chain and therefore an essential element…
Local Color. One of the festival’s official closing-night features is this maddeningly uneven coming-of-age story, set in 1974, about an 18-year-old aspiring artist and his stormy relationship with a burned-out, hard-drinking artist who has given up on his work and himself. The whole movie hinges on the young man, who…
Despite spending six years between the sheets with Marilyn Monroe, Arthur Miller was a gloomy guy. His works are famous and varied and very, very beautiful, but they do not contain many smiles. Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, View From a Bridge, the two-dozen others — they all suggest…
“The more horrifying the world becomes, the more art becomes abstract,” claimed Paul Klee, the renowned Swiss artist who once painted camouflage on airplanes during World War I. Perhaps, then, “Abstraction: A Group Show” is a sign of the times. If so, the signs are lovely and contemplative despite what…
(Koch) They just aren’t cranking out claymation Christmas specials like they used to, which makes this a welcome one. Nicer still, it’s got heroin! A mixture of stop motion with a little puppetry and live-action shots of William Burroughs (who may himself have been a Muppet), this tale of a…
Publisher: Vivendi Universal
Platform: PS2, Xbox, PSP, PC
Price: $40-$50
ESRB Rating: M (for Mature)
Score: 8.5 (out of 10)
These reviews are part of our continuing coverage of the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, which wraps on November 14: Trust Me. Making its world premiere at FLIFF, Trust Me satirizes the cutthroat movie industry. It’s a buddy film about a small-time conman with a heart of gold and his…
Recycled Life. If you think your job stinks, this short film might help put things in perspective. Documenting the lives and work of those who sustain themselves and their families by picking through the 40 acres of Guatemala City’s garbage dump, Leslie Iwerks (granddaughter of Ubbe Iwerks — animator, cartoonist,…
And the Sea Took Us. Marwella is a tiny fishing community on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, and there’s nothing very special about it. It is only one of the hundreds of villages destroyed by the Indian Ocean tsunamis of December 26, 2004. On that day, the town lost…
Tell Me Cuba. The history of Cuba is a long, rolling orgy of cataclysmically bad luck and even worse judgment, and very seldom is that sordid tale recounted with the clear-headedness and pure journalistic balls that filmmaker Megan Williams brings to Tell Me Cuba. Beginning with the native rebel Hatuey…
Anna Karenina (Kino) Arrested Development: Seasons One-Three (Fox) The Best of the Scripps National Spelling Bee (ESPN) Beverly Hills 90210: The Complete First Season (Paramount) Cinema Paradiso (Weinstein) The Fallen Idol (Criterion) Freak Out (Anchor Bay) Jag: The Complete Second Season (Paramount) The James Bond Collection: Volumes One and Two…
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is funnier than its malapropic title — the audience with whom I saw the movie wasn’t laughing so much as howling — and even more difficult to parse. Eyes wide, face fixed in an avid grin, Sacha Baron…
These reviews are part of our continuing coverage of the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival: Pittsburgh. Chris Bradley and Kyle LaBrache directed Pittsburgh, but Jeff Goldblum produced it and came up with the idea. Jeff Goldblum is also the star of Pittsburgh, and the character he portrays is… Jeff Goldblum…
Purvis of Overtown. This straightforward but penetrating 2005 documentary traces the life and career of Purvis Young, a self-taught artist who grew up in Miami’s notorious Overtown neighborhood in the 1940s and ’50s. He still lives and works there, painting at an amazing pace and still working with whatever he…
The Shoe Fairy is a sweet, strange, languidly paced love story told in vibrant colors about the marriage between a good-hearted dentist and a woman consumed with beautiful footwear. Mostly it’s about the woman, who begins as a little girl born unable to walk but who relates deeply to fairy…
Michael Hollinger was a violist before he became a playwright. Apparently, he was very good — 22 years ago, Carnegie-Mellon felt compelled to offer him a free ride in its graduate program. He didn’t want it. According to his official bio, Hollinger disliked rehearsal and despised orchestral work — antipathies…
The line between decorative art and fine art grows ever fuzzier, with some declaring that it no longer even exists at all, if it ever did. I wouldn’t go that far, but clearly what might once have been dismissed as elements of interior design can now more easily pass for,…
