Reindeer Games (review)

And then I’m mad again. How does a waste of celluloid like Reindeer Games ever get greenlighted in the first place? Who on Earth anointed Ehren Kruger Hot Young Screenwriter? Did anyone actually read this script before shooting began, or not till after the point at which there was too much dough already invested to just write it off as a loss?

Go (review)

So, Go’s three interconnected tales follow a diverse group of Los Angeles twentysomethings as their lives bang up against one another in a scenario that’s the 90s in a nutshell, from the Xer point of view: sex and danger that’s both exciting and terrifying (the clever script uses the word ‘go’ both in the imperative, let’s-get-out-of-here sense and also in the imperative, orgasmic sense, as a synonym for ‘come’). And is if to demonstrate typical Xer cynicism, it all happens while holly jolly Christmas passes by practically unnoticed in the background.

Mifune (review)

I knew nothing about Dogma when I saw Mifune, the latest film to earn the seal of approval from the Danish Dogma Collective. Which is probably for the best, because otherwise I’d have ended up paying too much attention to its technical aspects, and I’d have missed what turned out to be a damned entertaining movie.

Judy Berlin (review)

I’m guessing that Judy Berlin is at least a semi-autobiographical endeavor for writer/director Eric Mendelsohn, because David’s stipulations for his film also describes Mendelsohn’s: nothing sarcastic, and no plot. It is oddly captivating, though, if not in an entirely satisfying way. Like an American foreign film — or a Woody Allen film without the whining — Judy Berlin is a wandering meditation on death, lost dreams, and the boring realness of reality that never quite goes anywhere.

Not of This World (review)

Anyone close to a child — even one not your own — knows how suddenly and dramatically children can change your outlook on life. One tiny, lost newborn is all it takes to rattle the mundane complacency of the intriguingly disparate characters in Giuseppe Piccioni’s Not of This World.

Boiler Room and Wall Street (review)

And that realistic attitude is a big part of what makes Boiler Room so refreshing: Younger doesn’t offer any pat, happy endings, doesn’t have all his characters wrap things up by kissing and making nice. The film ends on such an abrupt note — and such a perfect one — that I gasped with unexpected delight.

Fantasia 2000 (review)

It was worth the wait, though. Yes, classical-music lovers complain about the cheapening of their favorite pieces — sure, Fantasia 2000 is like MTV with great composers instead of the latest boy band. But, like its predecessor, this is not only a wonderful introduction to classical music for kids (and uninitiated adults), it’s a rapturous, transporting experience the likes of which we don’t see in the multiplex often enough.

Pitch Black (review)

Aliens meets The Fugitive meets Con Air, is probably how writer David N. Twohy pitched his script. (Also credited as writers are Jim and Ken Wheat, which simply screams of fanboy brothers who wrote and, god knows how, managed to sell a spec script that had to be even more horrendous than what’s onscreen, if the more experience Twohy had to rewrite it.)

Pariah (review)

Can you stomach an unvarnished look into the vacant lives of young American skinheads? Pariah, like a through-the-looking-glass version of American History X, is brutally raw and often difficult to watch, but this low-budget indie is an important film that deserves to be seen by a large audience.