Month: November 2004

How’s this for a ‘hare-brained scheme’? You’re an upper-middle-class middle-aged man, still madly in love with your wife after decades together, and on the first Christmas after your now-grown daughter has flown the coop, you figure: Hey, maybe me and the little lady should skip the insanity of the holidays this year and treat ourselves to something special, like maybe a cruise of the islands.

I spent most of *Alexander* squirming, checking my watch, and occasionally busting out in derisive guffaws. Oliver Stone has perhaps finally gone round the bend: this is a disaster of a film, three hours of butt-numbing tedium punctuated by moments of hilarious high camp.

How many movies make you feel like a sophisticate just for having seen them? An evening out to see Federico Fellini’s masterwork — the new print beautifully shows off Otello Martelli’s silvery, creamy black-and-white cinematography — is just about as good for imparting a sense of jaded elegance as an impromptu trip to the Continent. … more…

At last, we have the answer to the question that has haunted humankind for the last twenty years: What would *Raiders of the Lost Ark* look like if Jerry Bruckheimer had gotten his grubby paws on it? And in retrospect, it seems we always really knew the answer, deep in our hearts: It comes as no surprise that the precisely calculated *National Treasure* is overflowing with endless chase sequences and stuff blowing up and acres of nonsense that no one even bothers to disguise, with a few Indiana Jones torches left lying around for the characters to pick up and use to cast a fiery golden light on the plot holes and the characters that are little more than loose concoctions of Hollywood cliches and the desperate reek of money-grubbing emanating from the screen.

This is one of those neither-here-nor-there movies, the kind that defy genre conventions and attempt to approximate the messiness of real life… the kind of movie we could use a lot more of, even though this one will probably disconcert more viewers than it enthralls. Graphically sexual, in spots, and cozily domestic throughout, this is … more…

Creative people get asked the question all the time: ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ It’s a question that mystifies creative people, who know that if we aren’t a million ideas behind, we’re doing something wrong: the problem isn’t finding ideas, it’s in stopping the flow in order to concentrate on just a few of them. Inspiration is everywhere, in all the places we go and in all the people we meet… and I’ve never seen a film capture that sense of being immersed in one’s own imagination better than *Finding Neverland* does.

I’ve heard tell that there are some grownups who don’t get why other grownups might want to watch a cartoon. I guess those grownups have forgotten how good it feels when you’re braying like a hyena for 90 minutes straight. Maybe if we told them, I dunno, that nonstop laughter is good for the abs or something, they might see the value in it.

Okay, dolls can be supercreepy when they’re inanimate and merely staring at you from across a semidarkened bedroom. Pour a serial killer’s deranged soul into one of those plastic nightmares, and the skin-crawlingness should go way up, right? But actually, Chucky (the voice of Brad Dourif: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers) is … more…

Bridget Jones, the stupid bint, is an embarrassment to my entire gender: she’s shallow, petty, irrational, self-obsessed, neurotic, immature, totally devoid of character, simultaneously smug and completely lacking in self-confidence, in constant need of stroking and reassurance, and she expects men to be able to read her mind and bend to her every whim. She is the kind of woman who gives women a bad name. In fact, she doesn’t even deserve to be called a woman: she’s a girl, a child.

Joanne Woodward won an Oscar for her indelibly effective performance as Eve White, a mousy housewife suffering from multiple-personality disorder… and as Eve Black, an aggressively sexual vamp, and Jane, a smart, sensible, modern woman. The power of the film as a whole has been lessened with time, however; mental illness is now a frequent … more…