Year: 2005

Just once, I’d like to hear a studio exec come out on a fine Monday morning and say, ‘Hey, d’ya know why our film made only $2 mill on 5,000 screens this weekend? Because it’s crap. A steaming, oozing pile of pure, unadulterated, toxic baby shit. We’re really sorry we tried to perpetrate this on the moviegoing public, and boy, did most of you catch on and stay away. Good for you. As a show of good faith, we will be refunding the ticket price to all those poor dumb souls who got suckered in. Our bad.’

There’s lots of scientists who study neat-o things like marine seismology and astrobiology in *Aliens of the Deep,* James Cameron’s new 3-D IMAX movie, and they all say things like ‘Cool!’ and ‘Wow!’ and ‘Awesome!’ a lot. Not that it’s not justified, cuz they’re like two and a half miles down in the ocean in science-fictiony mini submarines checking out landscapes that look downright lunar, and any geek worth her telescope has dreamed about walking on the moon or Mars or Somewhere Else other than Earth.

The often conflicting human drives for social acceptance and liberated individuality are at all-out war with each other in this disconcerting film, a striking debut from director Siegrid Alnoy and star Sasha Andres. In another iteration, the spare script — by Alnoy, Jérôme Beaujour and François Favrat — could have been the blueprint for a … more…

The year has barely begun, and already we have the film to beat for the title of 2005’s Movie That Makes You Want To Move To Another Planet To Avoid Any Association With Its Creators. Oh, it’s not just a hideous swamp artificial sentimental claptrap, it’s an unescapable morass of ethnic and gender stereotypes, crotch … more…

So, we’re told as *Assault on Precinct 13* opens, this is ‘A Why Not Production,’ which pretty much sums up the attitude behind the endeavor. ‘Why Not steal the title of an old cult favorite and slap it on a shoddy, contrived action movie and pretend it’s a remake? Who’s gonna stop us? You?’

With two of the damn things opening on the same day, I think it’s safe to make it official: there is now no denying that there is a subgenre of triumph-of-the-human-spirit melodrama that must be dubbed the Dead Poets Society Movie. Stand and deliver your Mona Lisa smile for a story about dangerous minds who lean on me and learn the music of the heart. Or something. Cuz as Mr. Holland learned, you’re never too old to, er, learn.

Carol Kane (The Princess Bride) garnered an Oscar nomination in 1975 for her intensely, intimately realized performance here as Gitl, a Russian immigrant to New York in the 1890s, but the rest of the package around her isn’t quite so satisfying. Shot in moody black-and-white — which looks crisp and clean in the new digital … more…