Freudians disheartened by the Bearded One’s fall from psychotherapeutic grace may be cheered to learn that ol’ Sigmund lives and prospers at the movies, at least in child-friendly cinema. The Spiderwick Chronicles, an extravagantly oedipal fantasy adventure based on the popular children’s novels by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, comes…
Across the Universe (Sony) The Apartment: Collector’s Edition (MGM) The Aristocats: Special Edition (Disney) Blonde and Blonder (First Look) Boy Meets Girl (Unearthed) Drive-In Cult Classics: 8 Movie Collection (Navarre) Feast of Love (MGM) Fierce People (Lionsgate) The Jane Austen Book Club (Sony) Midnight Express 30th Anniversary Edition (Sony)Psychotronica: Volumes…
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Warner Bros.) Beautifully shot, masterfully acted, and 19 hours too long, Assassination is an uneven mix of the artful and the arty that never had a shot at bringing in the audience that Brad Pitt’s chiseled melon should’ve delivered. Pitt…
In Starting Out in the Evening, a new film by Andrew Wagner, a pneumatic graduate student spreads honey over the face of the elderly New York novelist she’s trying to seduce. Later, the two will lie down on his bed with their hands by their sides, and later still, he…
When a friend recently told me that she’d been confused by the poster for the Matthew McConaughey-Kate Hudson fortune-hunting romp Fool’s Gold adorning her local multiplex — that she’d thought for sure this movie had already come and gone — I understood her bewilderment. Even as a professional film critic…
Aqua Teen Hunger Force: 5 (Warner Bros.) Barn of the Naked Dead (Legend House) Bordertown (THINKFilm) Canvas (Universal) Chancer: Series 2 (Acorn Media) The Comebacks (Fox) Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Complete Sixth Season (HBO) Daddy Day Camp (Sony) Damages: The Complete First Season (Sony) Drumline: Special Edition (Fox) El Cid:…
The King of Kong (New Line) Seth Gordon’s best-of-2007 documentary about the battle for Donkey Kong supremacy remains a work-in-progress: Billy Mitchell, the longtime titleholder dethroned by Steve Wiebe over the course of this hysterical, thrilling, and occasionally sad little film, recently reclaimed the throne — and Wiebe has vowed…
A fourth Rambo? The question isn’t why; it’s what took him so long. Was America’s avenging angel of meat just planning to sit out Fallujah and what we’re cooking up for Iran and Syria? (Oops — pretend that last part was redacted.) OK, sure, last time we saw John Rambo,…
Perhaps the most oft-quoted line from Zack Snyder’s cinematic adaptation of the Frank Miller graphic novel 300 is, “Tonight we dine in hell!” Chowing down on a box of Butterfinger Minis during a screening of Meet the Spartans, you will truly understand what that means. You remember 300, right? A…
America! The Complete Series (RHI) Barney Miller: The Complete Second Season (Sony) Best Actress Collection (Fox) Best Picture Academy Award Winners Collection (Fox) Blonde Ambition (Sony) Butterfly Collectors (Koch Vision) The Catherine Cookson Anthology (Koch Vision) ER: The Complete Eighth Season (Warner Bros.) The Game Plan (Disney) Hawaii Five-O: The…
Confessions of a Superhero (Arts Alliance) As one of those quoted on the package (“A more beautiful documentary you’re unlikely to find”), I can only reiterate my earlier praise: Matt Ogens’ doc, about mortals dressed as superheroes trolling Hollywood Boulevard for tourists’ loose change, is stunning to look at —…
Regarding the irrelevance of Untraceable: First of all, torture is so 2007, and just because this drab little thriller with a flashy love of pain imagines itself a “critique of violence” doesn’t make it any less superfluous. Second of all, untraceable? Ha! You wish. Although it’s true that the villain…
Persepolis is a small landmark in feature animation. Not because of technical innovation — though it moves fluidly enough and its drawings have a handcrafted charm forgotten in the era of the cross-promoted-to-saturation CGI-‘toon juggernauts — but because it translates a sensitive, introspective, true-to-life, “adult” comic story into moving pictures…
Alex Haley’s Queen (Warner Bros.) Amazing Planet Earth (Questar) The Attic (Allumination) Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown (Warner Bros.) Breaker Morant (Image) Extras: The Complete Series (HBO) Dora the Explorer: Undercover Dora (Paramount) DragonLance: Dragons of the Autumn Twilight (Paramount) Good Luck Chuck (Lionsgate) In the Heat of the Night:…
Family Guy Presents: Blue Harvest (Fox) As someone with no use for Seth MacFarlane’s potty-mouthed Simpsons rip, I’ll admit to choking out a few giggles during his Star Wars send-up — though, truth be told, it’s slightly less daring than Spaceballs and, sure, Porn Wars. Stunningly faithful to the 30-year-old…
I do think the writing is pessimistic — all that stuff about life being a tragic experience,” says Angela Stark (played by newcomer Hayley Atwell) early in Woody Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream. An actress talking about the play she’s appearing in at a small London theater, Stark could just as well…
If Diane Keaton were a comer in 2007, she’d likely be stuck in romantic comedies cooked up in movie-studio test kitchens. No Godfather for her. No Annie Hall, no Shoot the Moon, no Reds. Filmmakers who now use Katherine Heigl as their go-to girl would be flummoxed by the willowy…
The All New Super Friends Hour: Season One, Volume One (Turner) American Carny: True Tales From the Circus Sideshow (Koch Vision) Cary Grant: 4-Disc Collector’s Set (Republic) Casablanca (Warner Bros.) Death Sentence (Fox) Eagle vs. Shark (Miramax) Evil Roy Slade (TMG) Golden Door (Miramax) Happy Tree Friends: Complete Season One…
Joshua (Fox) George Ratliff’s movie, a sort of satirical take on Rosemary’s Baby, came and went upon its release; seems no one got the joke about how parents (Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga, in this case) are scared shitless of their own children — especially the titular Joshua, played by…
Having a child destroys your immune system to horror, real or imagined. Before the blessed event, you could laugh off The Exorcist, The Omen, or any of a thousand gory shockers with some wide-eyed tyke as either the prey or the spawn of Beelzebub. Afterward, you can’t even see the…
Youth Without Youth, Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed return to the fray, is a curious project — well-crafted, personal, and movie-movie old-fashioned even in its vanguard aspirations. Simply put, it’s a Faustian romance about the reversal of time and transmigration of souls that, shot mainly in Romania, adds a soupçon of…
Since promising Armageddon in the leadoff bars of Straight Outta Compton, star-producer Ice Cube has been one canny career man. In recent years, he’s pulled up stake in the foundering rap game and doesn’t seem to think twice about the cred damage that could come from pratfalling through PG family…
