Year: 2005

Fighter pilot Josh Lucas is ‘armed for penetration detonation,’ he informs us as *Stealth* opens, and so I just gave up right then and there and decided to go weak in the knees for the next two hours. Which, if you can manage it, is the best way to enjoy a hilariously absurd slice of American cheese like this one.

I don’t seriously believe that John Cusack actually exists. I think he is a cruel hoax — perpetrated by god knows who — to torture smart single women with the idea of him, that there might actually be clever, funny, cute, grownup guys out there who are philosophical and romantic and straight and available and who still look great in a long black trenchcoat and not like they’re trying to recapture their adolescence or anything sad like that even on the verge of 40. You know, just so we smart single gals don’t all slash our wrists after giving up on finding the perfect man.

Family Tides Got family? It’s not such a straightforward question anymore. How could it be, for me and for so many others of my thirtysomething generation? We marry late or not at all — or we’re gay and told our marriages don’t count — and are often separated from relatives by states or continents, but … more…

*Murderball* sets you straight about one thing right off the bat: ‘Quadriplegic’ does not mean “totally paralyzed” — it just means dude has some impairment in all four limbs. *Murderball* sets you straight about a second thing next: Patronize these guys at your own peril. They play a sport called ‘murderball,’ after all, and it’s only a slight exaggeration to describe the game’s main rule as, ‘It’s basically kill the man with the ball,’ as one enthusiastic player gleefully exclaims.

Filmmaker John G. Young won festival awards with his first film, Parallel Sons, but he was having a helluva time getting his second film produced. So finally he decided to do it himself, and shot The Reception in eight days, in just a few locations, for $5,000. In most cases, that’d be a disclaimer, a … more…

Right off the bat, we’re assaulted by Glenn Close’s Broadway diva, who rages to her master class of wannabe thespians how we’re none of us passionate anymore, how we substitute iced mochachinos for emotion, or some such hotheaded nonsense. So of course you know instantly that the film’s title is going to refer to emotional … more…

A bloodbath set to “Free Bird.” A slo-mo shootout whereby insanely driven cops and against intensely sociopathic serial killers square off. A comic interlude in which the relative merits of Groucho Marx and Elvis Presley as entertainers are debated. If you’ve seen death-rocker Rob Zombie’s debut film, the perfunctory would-be shocker House of 1,000 Corpses, … more…

It’s as wildly uneven as your cousin’s wedding — some of it is a blast, some of it wallows in ridiculous sentimentality, some of it is just dull — but your cousin’s wedding didn’t feature the tag team of Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn. These guys are two of my favorite performers today, Wilson (The … more…