American Movie movie review: how to make an American movie
It’s the rawness of having a man’s unfulfilled — possibly unfulfillable — dreams on such open display that makes a tiny part of me wish that American Movie were in fact a fake.
Portraits Chinois (review)
Portraits Chinois (Shadowplay) plays like a less-goofy, French version of Friends, following a group of young, single Parisians over the course of a year or so as they deal with career frustration and watch their love lives implode.
Last Night movie review: TEOTWAWKI
But if you knew when we as a species were going to buy the farm, how would you spend your final hours? That’s the question Canadian filmmaker Don McKellar asks in Last Night, which he wrote, directed, and stars in. Sort of the flip side of movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact, Last Night focuses not on the heroes trying to save the planet from certain doom but instead peeks in at how ordinary people are facing the end of the world.
Being John Malkovich movie review: head games
An out-of-work puppeteer unwittingly discovers a portal into the brain of actor John Malkovich. That bald description of the film’s strikingly original concept doesn’t even begin to cover how deliciously odd Being John Malkovich is.
The Faculty (review)
Waiter, waiter! This food is terrible! And the portions are too small! That’s kinda the way I feel about The Faculty. It’s another bad, bad, bad installment in Kevin Williamson’s neverending quest to send-up teen horror flicks, and it doesn’t even get all the dumb cliches right. If you can’t expect a teen horror flick to deliver lots of gratuitously naked breasts and kids having gratuitous sex and then getting gratuitously killed, what has this world come to? I mean, really!
The Apartment Complex (review)
Poor Chad Lowe. He hadn’t been doing too badly for himself — he won an Emmy for the series Life Goes On and recently did a nice guest turn on ER. But if the new Showtime Original movie The Apartment Complex is any kind of indication, he’s about to join his brother Rob down in the bowels of the entertainment industry: cheesy made-for-TV movies. Put The Apartment Complex back-to-back with Rob’s last TV flick, Atomic Train, and you’d have the makings one of those little variety packs of cheese balls. You know, the kind that come rolled in nuts.
Punitive Damage (review)
I don’t mean to belittle Kamal’s death but rather the sheer apathy that has resulted in his story being untold until now. Punitive Damage tells his powerful, disturbing tale, which needs to be seen by anyone concerned about justice in a world seemingly increasingly hostile to the concept.
The Legend of 1900 (review)
I won’t be surprised to soon hear female moviegoers professing to be madly in love with Tim Roth. 1900 — yes, that’s a name — is the kind of movie character with whom women fall madly in love, and infatuation like that invariably spills over onto the actor portraying him. Not bad for a guy whose career has mostly been spent playing hoodlums and heavies.
Bringing Out the Dead (review)
‘Ever since I was a kid I wanted to be a paramedic.’ If you’re expecting director Martin Scorsese to give the GoodFellas treatment to ambulance jockeys in Bringing Out the Dead, you’ll be disappointed. Instead of a my-world-and-welcome-to-it approach, Scorsese offers us a dizzying stream-of-consciousness meditation on death and dying via an EMS tech who calls himself a ‘grief mop.’
Monument Avenue (review)
It’s always a bit of a thrill to discover a gem of a film at the video store — it’s like finding buried treasure. Monument Avenue, a slow-burn drama, is exactly the kind of small, character-driven movie that gets ignored at the box office. Fortunately, these movies also play well on video, which allows them to finally get the audience they deserve.
