Why are most fantasy movies set in a pseudo-medieval world of dragons and knights and Euro-pagan magic? Because that’s the ethnic demographic of your average Hollywood filmmaker — even in fantasy, we turn to what we know. But as the pool of filmmakers grows — and digital equipment brings down the cost of producing a … more…

Current events lend this an urgent intensity it probably was not intended to evince. What last summer would have been merely a damned entertaining, high-class popcorn flick (like Clancy/Ryan predecessor ‘The Hunt for Red October’), its studious demeanor imbuing it with cautionary overtones, now plays disturbingly like CNN Breaking News. It is absolutely must-see.

I can’t help but imagine that this paean to codependency and manic depression was written by Melvin Udall… you know, Jack Nicholson’s misogynistic novelist in ‘As Good as It Gets.’ When asked how he creates his women characters, he replies: ‘I think about a man, and then I remove reason and accountability.’

If you’d ever hoped to hear Patrick Stewart snarl “Get off ma land!” in a Texas drawl, then here’s your chance. Yup, the go-to man for Dickens, for the Bard, for your 11th-grade English lit classics, sports a Kenny Rogers beard and drunkenly shoots off rifles in this made-for-TV production from TNT (which, along with … more…

Managed care bad. Not exactly a newsflash, but since Showtime has just about single-handedly saved the made-for-TV movie from obviousness and melodrama, you can expect that its take on the state of American health care will be worth watching. Sure, early on, there’s a tad much exposition along the lines of “As you know, Doctor … more…

I hate that something that is intended to be and should be plain, simple, silly fun has to be politicized, but there’s just no getting around it with Undercover Brother. Maybe I’m not allowed to talk about these things, since I’m just a clueless white girl. But I’m going blather on cluelessly anyway.

Lyne wants us to think Unfaithful is a ‘real’ story about infidelity, about how and why ‘real’ people cheat, and the ‘real’ consequences. It’s, you know, arthouse. And maybe the French will love it — Woody Allen seems to think the French will watch any old crap, for instance — because zhere iz no Hollywood bullsheet like mo-ti-va-SHON to mire zhe characterz in bougeoise ex-pec-ta-SHONS. It is, how you say, gen-you-un. Oui.

Is there such a thing as a bad IMAX movie? That enormous screen makes just about anything as exciting as hell, including things you’d otherwise have less than zero interest in… like, in my case, ESPN’s Summer 2001 X Games. But amidst all those exhilarating, exuberant, you-are-there shots of street lugers racing down Philadelphia hills … more…

The latest from DreamWorks’ animation arm is so close to being a great film that it can’t help but leave you with the bitter aftertaste of what might have been. It’s got that tremendously moving Lion King circle-of-life, fundamental-interconnectedness-of-all-things thing going for it, plus that poignant Dances with Wolves what-did-we-lose-when-we-won-the-West thing, plus stunningly gorgeous, downright … more…

Reality has little to do with Enough. Enough is about watching Jennifer Lopez kick the living shit out of Billy Campbell. Why? Because that’s what gets preview audiences on their feet, cheering. Why it’s acceptable to cheer while a woman beats the holy crap out of a man, but not the other way around, is one question the thinking moviegoer might ask, and yet it’s far from the only outstanding question.