At first glance, Hidalgo seems to be nothing more than an old-fashioned, flat-footed adventure epic plunked down on a vast stretch of desert and amply furnished with the usual Hollywood conventions — a strong, silent cowboy on horseback, a couple of villains with nasty black mustaches, a killer sandstorm, and…
This Jew has spent several hours in the past week reading all four Gospels, as well as various supplementary (and often inflammatory) texts, upon which Mel Gibson based his The Passion of the Christ. I’ve read the interpretations of scholars, the apologias of popes, and the damnations of zealots. I’ve…
So this grown man walks into another teen-girl movie. He is not stunned to learn that it concerns clothes, fun, clothes, peer pressure, and clothes. The world outside can be ugly as hell, though, so he commences with the cynicism on low. This particular teen-girl movie is not about bopping…
It is so very nice when a movie completely outstrips the expectations conjured by its trailer, as is the case with The Dreamers. At first blush, this tale of three passionate youths caught up in the late ’60s Parisian countercultural revolution looked downright trite. Never mind that esteemed veteran director…
With 50 First Dates it seems as though Adam Sandler is trying to compile a greatest-hits film, cobbling together the stuff that worked in his previous films in the hopes that it’ll play even better all in one go. There’s the falsetto comedy song bit from every episode of Saturday…
At the opening of The Fog of War, the brilliant new documentary from director Errol Morris, we see a composed, sharply groomed, middle-aged Robert McNamara preparing to brief the press on the Vietnam War. He asks two questions: First, if the chart he’s set up is visible and, second, whether…
Whoops, franchise! Way back in 2002, who would have believed that a comedy starring rapper Ice Cube (née O’Shea Jackson) would be a hit, let alone spawn a sequel? Just having a giggle, obviously, but so are the producers of Barbershop 2: Back in Business, which handily snaps up its…
When the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, consisting of 20 raw college boys, beat the seemingly invincible, state-hardened Soviets and went on to win the gold medal at Lake Placid, the event was regarded, even in palm-lined Miami and iceless Honolulu, as the most amazing feat in U.S. Olympic history…
Surf’s up. Palm trees sway invitingly in the breeze. The sparkling beaches are amply decorated with bikini babes and hard-body surfer dudes. Everybody has a nice, cold drink with a wedge of fresh lime in it. Seen that way, The Big Bounce is as alluring a midwinter pitch for the…
There is a recent generation of American men who came of age too late for free love and wanton property grabbing and too early for post-grunge emotional wankery and info-age immediacy. Stuck on their iceberg, isolated by oceans from anything real like the original punk or goth movements or Australia’s…
So, have you ever wondered what exactly goes into the painting of a portrait? You might have suspected there might be more to it than a painter saying something along the lines of, “Hey, baby, can I, uh, paint you?” and then someone else saying, “Yeah, sure, that’d be cool.”…
Behold a tale of true love (between a boy and a bicycle), of tireless courage (from a bitty grandmother with a clubfoot), and of a very shocking new definition of sexy (three wizened matriarchs who ravenously slurp down frogs). This is The Triplets of Belleville, an animated extravaganza of Gallic…
OK, so there’s this terrible joke some dork told me: A mouse is drowning in quicksand, and an elephant happens by and says, “Here, grab hold of my large penis and I’ll pull you out!” The mouse, puzzled but desperate, agrees and is saved. Time passes, until the mouse happens…
Not a lot of people know this, but our word actress is derived from the Greek phrase strumpetos luckyos, meaning “prostitute who somehow landed an agent.” The reason this etymological root remains largely unappreciated is that it is entirely fake, fabricated for the present purpose of irritating a lot of…
William H. Macy’s plain-vanilla features and hang-dog screen demeanor have served him well. Who could resist him as the clueless car dealer who hatched the disastrous kidnapping plot in Fargo or as the distraught husband of a frisky porn star in Boogie Nights? A splendid character actor with a gift…
Back in January of 2003, New Line Cinema released Final Destination 2, a horror movie in which the antagonist was the unseen hand of death itself. All the main characters knew their time was up, but they didn’t know how or when, so they existed in a constant state of…
It has become a subject of much discussion and debate among film fetishists in recent weeks: For which movie will Sean Penn win the Academy Award, Mystic River or 21 Grams? Perhaps this seems like so much jockeying for blurbs on a movie poster or a newspaper advertisement — Sean…
As a reader, you can easily assume that all the critics at a particular publication are more or less of the same mind, but here at New Times, that isn’t the case. We’re just too damn independent-minded to take our colleagues’ views into consideration, which is why, when coming up…
Seems a little early for a remake of Minority Report, but when your movie’s all about seeing and forgetting the future, who’s gonna remember Paycheck anyway? Like Steven Spielberg’s film of long-ago 2002, in which Tom Cruise sees the future and goes on the run to change it, John Woo’s…
For all of its inspired side trips down Imagination Lane, Big Fish is ultimately about one thing: the relationship between a son about to become a father and a father about to become a ghost. The movie is being marketed as one more Tim Burton fantasia, with its luminescent teaser-trailer…
Anthony Minghella’s magnificent film version of the Civil War epic Cold Mountain has much more going for it than Hollywood grandeur. Beyond its striking set pieces and gruesome battle scenes populated with thousands of extras, in addition to its movie-star glamour — Jude Law and Nicole Kidman are like beautiful…
You know how it’s often the ones we love whose flaws are most apparent? Well, when it comes to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, I am smitten. This film is a miracle, an extravaganza equal to its predecessors and in some ways more stunning. It…
