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Or, When Bad Things Happen to Rich People. Children of East Coast privilege, cynical Ben (Rob Morrow) and idealistic Adam (Jake Weber: U-571) are life-long friends, having endured the horrors of New England summers, Fifth Avenue winters, and an Ivy League education. But when Ben finds himself suddenly drawn to Adam’s coolly distant wife, Nina … more…
It’s been about 36 hours since I stumbled from the theater where I was tortured with Battlefield Earth, and the psychic wounds are only beginning to show themselves. I may never fully recover. Though it shamelessly rips off Planet of the Apes, Independence Day, Total Recall, and almost every other science fiction flick ever made, this is mostly its own brand of hell on Earth. I was expecting bad, but Battlefield Earth far surpasses my wildest dreams of sci-fi turkeyness. Stick a fork in this one, man — it’s done.
Maybe you’ve heard of The Omega Code. This is the ‘Christian thriller’ that shocked Hollywood last year by breaking into the box office top 10, if only momentarily, playing on only a handful screens across the Bible Belt. Why Hollywood was shocked is a bit of a mystery: The independently produced The Omega Code is illogical, anti-intellectual, tedious, and absurd, but no more so than any given Adam Sandler movie. Why should religious folks be any more discriminating than the vast secular majority? A real shock would be if, say, The Insider was such a blockbuster that Mattel cashed in with Jeffrey Wigand inaction figures.
Is Gladiator an action movie? Is it an historical drama? Is it a sweeping epic? Yes. Like The 13th Warrior, this is a thinking person’s action movie. Like Braveheart, this is a story of a brutal era told with stunning realism. Like Terminator 2, this is a violent movie that indicts our appetite for violence. Like The Matrix, this thrills on both a visceral and cerebral level.
You cannot make an historical drama on film anymore and expect to be taken seriously if you sanitize and Hollywoodize the reality of the situation. That wasn’t the case in 1960 when Spartacus was released, but its prettified depiction of the harsh conditions of slave life — indeed, of life for everyone — makes it difficult for me not to crack wise about the film. But that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate it, or recognize its high standing in the history of film or the collective memory of film lovers.
Men: can’t live with ’em, can’t leave ’em by the side of the road. So says a friend of mine. But that’s precisely what Mary Panton does — leave a man by the side of the road, that is — in Up at the Villa, one of those movies about the surprise of suppressed passion bursting free that I can never get enough of.
Falling in love with a married man is a sure path to heartbreak, as many a single girl has learned the hard way. Parisian Camille (Karin Viard) doesn’t want to hear about the drawbacks: she has, much to her surprise, become smitten with Alexis (Pierre-Loup Rajot). A straight-arrow local political activist, he, married with two … more…
A fender bender with a gangster. An explosion at the local yakuza HQ. A suitcase full of dirty — and bloody — money. This is the kind of day it has been for timid rental-car clerk Satoru Suzuki (Masanobu Ando). Throw in a meek nurse, Shizuko Sato (Japanese TV star Hikari Ishida), and you’ve got … more…
I am utterly in the thrall of Kevin Spacey, so whatever I say here must be taken with a grain of salt. I think he’s probably the most mesmerizing actor I’ve ever seen onscreen, and I’ve yet to see a film that he didn’t make worth seeing for his performance. And the ironic thing is, two movies that demonstrate this beguiling talent of Spacey’s are quite theatrical: The Big Kahuna is a faithful adaptation of a stage play, and Swimming with Sharks feels, at least in part, as if it could be.
The lovesick round-robin — Joe loves Mary, Mary loves Bill, and Bill loves someone else — is a fairly standard plot for romantic comedies, but it feels freshly deployed in director Bruno Barreto’s light and airy Bossa Nova. Set amongst the palm trees and sandy beaches of Rio de Janeiro, this bittersweet story follows a series of flirtatious entanglements between Brazilians and ex-pat and visiting Americans, most of whom have given up on love but find themselves persuaded to give the relationship game one more try.
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