The Holiday (review)
“You look like my Barbie doll,” a little girl tells Cameron Diaz. Bingo!
“You look like my Barbie doll,” a little girl tells Cameron Diaz. Bingo!
Surprise! This is as fresh, as clever, as lively, as huggable, as satisfying as animated movies get.
Corporations on the Couch Did you know there were water riots in Bolivia in early 2000? Poor urban Bolivians actually took to the streets over water… not because there wasn’t enough to go around but because the American construction and engineering firm Bechtel had taken over the country’s privatized water infrastructure, including — and here’s … more…

Nora Ephron’s delightful film is perhaps the epitome of the modern romantic comedy to which many a movie has aspired and few have even approached in its warmth, naturalness, and genuine spirit of amour.

Oh, great day in the glorious sunshiny Tuscany morning! A movie about a woman that actual women will be able to identify with, one that’s fantastical enough to be diverting and down-to-earth enough to let us recognize ourselves in it.
How often must we hear the same story over and over again before someone in a position to do something about it starts to listen? Oscar-nominated documentarian Liz Garbus relates a familiar tale — of horrible sexual abuse and parental neglect and indifference from the justice system — with a shocking, powerful intimacy that’s a … more…
It’s completely predictable and predictably feel-good, but so damn what? This is an utterly delightful flick, not for the least which reason is that it’s about complex, engaging, and realistically flawed young women devoting their lives to something more ambitious than chasing boys and buying cosmetics. London teenage Jesminder (Parminder K. Nagra) lives in a … more…

A new-fashioned screwball comedy combining improbable elements, from ancient Egyptian artifacts to downtown New York chic, with classic conceits like mistaken identity and romantic conundrums.

Opens with Hitchcockian strings warp-warping as sticky red blood drips down a white screen… or is it blood? This touch of black whimsy isn’t the only one to be found here…
Beautifully written by W.D. Richter and directed with a sure hand by Jodie Foster, Home for the Holidays wraps all those contradictory feelings up and serves them for Thanksgiving dinner. Perhaps the most realistic holiday movie I’ve ever seen, this oddly charming, poignant, and blackly funny film is a treasure not to be missed.