Phone Booth (review)

Phone booth? When was the last time you saw a phone booth? I mean, a quarter of a century ago, Christopher Reeve could already get a laugh when his Clark Kent looked askance at the little kiosk that was his only public telephonic refuge for quick changes. But here’s an entire movie, set in the 21st century, that expects us to accept not only that a phone booth still stands in Manhattan but that its glass panels remained unbroken until a dramatic moment here in the very course of events that unfold before our eyes.

Bend It Like Beckham movie review

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 Beautiful Mind (again) (review)

So whaddaya know? Ron Howard and Russell Crowe rode the short bus all to the way to the Oscars by playing the ‘we made a sensitive film about the mentally ill’ card. Which is complete crap, of course. *A Beautiful Mind* is pure made-for-Hollywood pap about the mentally ill in which schizophrenia is treated by Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman the way doctors used to treat it in the bad old days before we (some of us, anyway) were enlightened about diseases of the brain: Hey, snap out of it! Get over it! It’s all in your head!

The Recruit movie review: stating the obvious

Welcome to the Hollywood Action Movie, post September 11, wherein the hero is a jaded rogue with a videogame-honed trigger finger and his own conspiracy-theory Web site, and the villain is a jaded rogue driven mad by a lack of appreciation for a lifetime devoted to public service.

Chicago (review)

Their *Chicago* — based on the stage musical by John Kander, Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse — is utterly singable, danceable, cheerable, with musical numbers that straddle the unwillingness of today’s movie audiences to suspend our disbelief about movie characters breaking into song unless they’re Disney lions or talking candelabra.

Adaptation (review)

I should probably watch Being John Malkovich again before I try to write this. I’ve got the DVD here somewhere. It’s vitally important that I watch BJM again right now. I could just put it on for a while. I could write while I’m watching it. I can do that.

The Christmas Shoes (review)

Can you believe it? They made a movie out of that insanely inane song. And when I say “they,” I mean the insidious They: our overlords in the military- industrial- entertainment complex, offering us some (supposedly) feel-good pabulum about downsizing, about trading in the corporate fast-track to teach elementary school, about the nobility of the struggling working class, about how we should all be grateful we’re together this Christmas and no one’s dying of congestive heart failure.