reviews by genre

Croupier movie review: zen and the art of dealing

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The 1998 British film Croupier, only now getting a limited American release, was made well before the recent Reindeer Games, but comparing them is too delicious an opportunity to bash Hollywood to let pass by. Both have the same conceit of their cores: a Christmas Eve casino heist. In Hollywood’s eyes, this is a chance to show us Santas with machine guns running amuck, and not much else. In the hands of legendary British director Mike Hodges, who made the 1971 classic Get Carter, and equally legendary screenwriter Paul Mayersberg, who wrote The Man Who Fell to Earth, it becomes a spare, seductive, almost novelistic suspense drama in which the biggest crime is its protagonist’s misunderstanding of himself.

Erin Brockovich (review)

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If last Saturday night’s sneak-preview audience is any guide, this could be Julia Roberts’s biggest movie yet. Everything she did onscreen, everything she said either elicited ardent routs of laughter or sent what could only be called worshipful undulations rippling through the crowd. The thrall in which Roberts held these people frightened me. I’m sure execs at Universal Pictures are already peeing in their collective pants with anticipation over this weekend’s box office. Biggest opening ever for a March weekend — you read it here first.

Mission to Mars (review)

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So how else can I react to Mission to Mars but with enthusiasm? Here is a mostly scientifically accurate movie about the planet that actually looks as if it were filmed there. No, it’s not a perfect film — but as one of the like-minded friends with whom I saw Mission to Mars pointed out, we’re so hungry for real science fiction on film that we can forgive its flaws.

Apollo 13 (review)

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Despite the fact that we all know how the story ends, director Ron Howard manages to make Apollo 13 not only riveting but suspenseful as well. Howard’s attention to detail goes above and beyond the call of duty.

Reindeer Games (review)

And then I’m mad again. How does a waste of celluloid like Reindeer Games ever get greenlighted in the first place? Who on Earth anointed Ehren Kruger Hot Young Screenwriter? Did anyone actually read this script before shooting began, or not till after the point at which there was too much dough already invested to just write it off as a loss?

Go (review)

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So, Go’s three interconnected tales follow a diverse group of Los Angeles twentysomethings as their lives bang up against one another in a scenario that’s the 90s in a nutshell, from the Xer point of view: sex and danger that’s both exciting and terrifying (the clever script uses the word ‘go’ both in the imperative, let’s-get-out-of-here sense and also in the imperative, orgasmic sense, as a synonym for ‘come’). And is if to demonstrate typical Xer cynicism, it all happens while holly jolly Christmas passes by practically unnoticed in the background.

Boiler Room and Wall Street (review)

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And that realistic attitude is a big part of what makes Boiler Room so refreshing: Younger doesn’t offer any pat, happy endings, doesn’t have all his characters wrap things up by kissing and making nice. The film ends on such an abrupt note — and such a perfect one — that I gasped with unexpected delight.