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Despite its placement in assorted gay and lesbian film festivals, its heaps of accolades and shelf full of awards, this moody British drama doesn’t really reflect its title. It’s not so much about love or two girls coming to terms with their sexuality as it is about a pair...
Heck, even I sat in the theater thinking, “This is really good, but not quite as good as X2 or Spider-Man 2.” By the same token, the first films in those two franchises weren’t as strong as their sequels, so perhaps The Fantastic Four Return (or whatever the more-than-certain...
I’m fairly certain that all my history and religion teachers from high school would heave a sigh of frustration that I remember precious little about the Crusades. I mean, I have a vague recollection of sitting in class and studying the period, but that was more than 15 years...
I’ll admit that I was a little skeptical going into The Upside of Anger. By the time I was heading to the theater, I’d already seen tons of glowing reviews and Sundance raves, and Joan Allen’s performance was being heralded as nothing short of spectacular. But I remember similar buzz...
Maybe it’s a side effect of the collective dumbing-down of moviegoing audiences. Maybe it’s because this new comedy starring former bad-boy rapper Ice Cube is a prime example of Lowest Common Denominator filmmaking. Maybe it’s because movies like Christmas With the Kranks are just too subtle and understated. I...
The film is a dreamy, surreal, CGI- and bluescreen-heavy sci-fi fantasy adventure film that plays out in an overly complex and often convoluted manner but remains strangely, and almost hypnotically, engaging. Long story short: I liked it, but I’m not entirely sure why. The story (which is admittedly scattered)...
Phoenix is something of an ambitious but overblown star vehicle for Dennis Quaid that’s filled to overflowing with gritted teeth (with or without the requisite gnashing), rippling muscles, scenery chewing and dialogue so cheesy that one wonders if the filmmakers actually intended it to be tongue-in-cheek. A remake of...
It’s clear pretty much from the outset that all involved felt they were making A Big Important Drama and that dreams of Oscar danced in their heads, but the resulting work actually had a few moviegoers in the theater I was in snickering. The film, directed by Mike Nichols,...
I haven’t read the John Grisham novella Skipping Christmas on which this film is based, but several of my friends have and many of them are refusing to see its big-screen adaptation based solely on its trailers and commercials. They loved the story and are greatly afeared of what...
Jude Law had six films on his resumé for 2004 (still to come were Closer, his cameo in The Aviator and his role as narrator for Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events) and, unfortunately, this third offering was a little limp. A remake of the Michael Caine classic...
Why? Because about two minutes into Ladder 49, as a crew of firefighters are climbing stairs in a burning warehouse, Robert Patrick’s character says, “I’m gettin’ too old for this s**t.” Yup. One of the most overused, lame movie clichés, right off the bat. And to make matters worse,...
Apparently someone somewhere thought maybe, just maybe, if they dumped this film into the cinematic wasteland that is late-August, it might ring up a little box office change. So here it is. On the big screen. Where you can laugh and point at its twenty-foot-high (or more, depending on...
