reviews by genre

Fantastic Four (review)

Oh my, but we’ve been spoiled for comic book movies these last few years, haven’t we, with *X-Men* and *Spider-Man* and *Hulk* and *Batman Begins.* I just get all warm and squishy and totally turned on thinking about anguished, neurotic, potentially psychotic, not-at-all-well superheroes who need desperately to be hugged and coddled and, ahem, comforted after indulging their angsts and neuroses while beating the living crap out of bad guys bent on world domination or somesuch. What girl doesn’t?

Moonlighting: Seasons One and Two (review)

Twenty years after its debut on ABC, one of the most entertaining hour-long series in the history of television finally comes to DVD… and it is most welcome. Not every episode in this dramedy mystery series is brilliant, and parts of other episodes drag, but when former model turned private eye Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd: … more…

The House of Eliott: Series One (review)

From actresses Eileen Atkins (Cold Mountain) and Jean Marsh (The Mayor of Casterbridge), the gals who gave us Upstairs, Downstairs, comes a story of two women who go from upstairs to down (sort of), sisters Evie and Beatrice Eliott (Louise Lombard: Hidalgo, and Stella Gonet: Nicholas Nickleby) left destitute by the death of their rich … more…

Fat Actress: The Complete First Season (review)

Multiple Emmy winner Kirstie Alley breaks one of the last taboos in Hollywood: she’s fat, and she’s on TV, in a delicious guilty pleasure that’s all about how fat she is, and how Hollywood wants nothing to do with her as a result. Hilariously catty and supremely mean, this hybrid reality show/sitcom is based on … more…

The Best of Tokyo Pig (review)

If I didn’t know better (and I’m not sure I do know better), I’d say this hyperkinetic and slyly witty series from Japan is actually a sendup of the bizarre, frenetic anime that dominates the cartoon world at the moment. Visually, these eight wacky episodes ape the psychedelic style that’s been known to induce epileptic … more…

Rize (review)

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You’ve heard of the great war between the Los Angeles gangs the Crips and the Bloods, right? But have you heard of the longstanding rivalry between the Clowns and the Krumpers? Neither had I, and I felt a bit like slinking down in my seat in embarrassment while watching *Rize,* the powerfully moving new documentary about this Southern California dance craze.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (review)

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Oh my god could this be any more delicious? It’s hot and sexy and stuff blows up real good and there’s genuine *wit* and smarts and luscious allowance for the mysteries of lusty attraction and even lustier strife between men and women and did I mention it’s hot and sexy even though there’s hardly any actual sex worth mentioning actually in the movie?

High Tension (aka Switchblade Romance) (review)

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How do you solve a problem like Marie? We haven’t seen a horror-movie heroine like her since perhaps *Alien*’s Ripley, ardently independent and fiercely determined not to be a victim… but with a twist to her psyche that will, I suspect, be a greater source of fascinated, can’t-look-away terror to male audiences than the nonstop gore. For there is an aggressively sexual element to Marie’s intensity that ends up being the most vivid thing about *High Tension* — sublimated female rage and passion are given full, furious expression here, and… wow, does it make for a shocking, provocative, unforgettable movie about how women are too often overlooked, ignored, underestimated, and misunderstood.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (review)

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Well, hooray for a movie about girls doing their own thing. Too bad it’s more like a training-bra of a flick designed to indoctrinate tweens with the estrogen-drenched sappiness of “women’s pop culture” — you know, like Oprah magazine and Lifetime Original movies and Celine Dion ballads — than a story that deals with the … more…

Madagascar (review)

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‘Ahhhh! Nature! It’s all over me! Get it off!’ screams Melman the urban giraffe once he reaches the titular island in *Madagascar,* and New Yorkers will scream, too, with laughter, because we recognize ourselves in it, and everyone else will scream with laughter because they’ll think it’s making fun of our neuroses. But we like our neuroses just fine, thank you, and appreciate the tribute to them that *Madagascar* is.