Month: June 2005

I wish I could say that the fact that Ralph Kramden’s M1 bus route, which should be taking him northbound up Madison Avenue, as the bus’s signage clearly indicates, is taking him southbound down Seventh Avenue, way the hell on the other side of Manhattan, was the biggest problem with this abysmal TV-to-movie adaptation. But actually, deciphering twisted bus routes was quite a pleasant distraction from the rest of the movie, which is torture.

Director Catherine Hardwicke is back in the teen milieu she covered to such devastating effect in her debut film, Thirteen, though here she’s gone historical, documenting how a gang of misfit kids in 1970s Venice Beach, California, pretty much invented the idea of extreme sports by becoming daredevil skateboarders, and getting famous for it. It’s … more…

Hungarian filmmaker Nimród Antal takes us into a literal underworld with his funny, frightening, fantastical debut feature… and it’s the kind of self-assured, totally enrapturing film that makes you realize how few directors achieve such a necessary confidence in their own hocus pocus. The serpentine tunnels and shadowy corners and deep-bore escalators of the Budapest … more…

They talk about fighters who have ‘heart,’ and here’s the real deal: Jim Braddock, the ‘bulldog of Bergen,’ the underdog-champion boxer who saved the nation’s soul — and his family from starvation and separation — during the miserable depths of the Great Depression. Man, that sounds corny, and it *is* corny. But there’s an undeniable power to *Cinderella Man,* and it’s down to the intense and gripping performances of Russell Crowe (as the boxer, of course), and Paul Giamatti (as his trainer and manager), both of whom, as far as I’m concerned, can do no wrong…