Year: 2002

When her husband, Newsweek photojournalist Harrison Lloyd (David Strathairn: Simon Birch), goes missing on assignment in the Balkans, fellow Newsweeker Sarah (Andie MacDowell: Town and Country), goes in search of him. Set in 1991 amidst the beginnings of civil war in Yugoslavia, this is a brutal film, in every right way: an antidote to the … more…

And it’s based on a video game. Which narrows the audience down to teenaged boys (of all ages) who are simultaneously terrified of and drawn to caricatures of strong women. Which is basically the audience Hollywood shoots for in general anyway, so it should be looking at a hit here.

I got yer time machine right here. See, you buy a ticket to this new Guy Pearce movie, and 90 minutes later, 3 days have passed by.

The bad news is, you’re a schlub of a guy. The good news is, you’ve just met the girl of your dreams: she’s smart, funny, sexy as hell. The bad news is, her attitude reeks of “Not if you were the last man on Earth.” The good news is, you are, which is making her … more…

The problem with sex in the movies isn’t that there’s too much of it — it’s that’s there’s too little of it. There may be no shortage of nearly naked bodies and sweaty grunting and creaking bedsprings, but that’s just raw physicality — what’s missing is seductiveness, sensuality, intelligence, a sense of the numinous. What’s missing is the notion that our most important sex organ is the human brain.

Director Tom Shadyac is obsessed with cancer kids. He fetishizes their huge, red-rimmed eyes and pasty, transparent skin stretched tight over bald little heads. It’s vaguely disgusting, but he does it anyway.

Being a vampire is hard work. There’s all the practicing of your indecipherable Eurotrashy accent. There’re the constant wardrobe changes. You have to rehearse the snarling and the narrowing of your eyes to denote your immortal ennui. And all that is besides the lounging in coffins and the caressing of creamy, anonymous necks and, of course, the bloodsucking.

The gentle flow of genuine emotion in which Dark Blue World immerses the audience becomes all the more refreshing and stirring when the inevitable comparison is made: This bittersweet and heartbreaking tale of two World War II pilots in love with the same woman is everything Michael Bay’s overblown and sticky-sweet Pearl Harbor could have been.

Lookin’ forward to that big new Bruce Willis action movie this weekend? Die Hard in Stalag 17, I think it’s called, and it’s got lots of stuff blowin’ up real good and Bruce playing some guy called Hart who runs around screaming ‘Yippie-ki-ay, Nazi motherfuckers!’ Right?

It makes me feel weird / Thinking about all the bad things in the world / Like puppies with broken legs / And butterflies that die / And movies starring pop queens