reviews

Ah, Venice So how does a hot young heterosexual actor follow up an über convincing performance as a tormented gay cowboy? By playing the world’s greatest (straight) lover, of course. Happily, Heath Ledger’s latest move isn’t just career-smart but a whole lotta fun for the audience, too. He tops a glorious year stuffed with intriguing … more…

Gay? Not Even Mildly Content Is there a real place called Brokeback Mountain? Or did Annie Proulx make it up? (Rhetorical — don’t deluge me with emails about the geography of the Western states.) I wonder, cuz the name so perfectly evokes misery and pain and loneliness and all those other tragically romantic heartbreaky emotions … more…

Mother Earth weeps at the environment-ravaging fecundity of Tom and Kate Baker (Steve Martin: Bringing Down the House and Bonnie Hunt: Monsters, Inc.), with their 12 kids and sprawling suburban lifestyle, and now you can weep, too. For their second outing as a supposedly all-American family is a cinematic Bataan death march of pratfalls, kicks … more…

It sounds like something we’ve seen a million times before: Athlete overcomes hardship to triumph, inspiring those around him to achieve more than they ever thought they could before. But the story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah of Ghana is extra poignant not just because it’s true but also because of the refusal of directors Lisa … more…

So you’re a poor hardworking joe who’s been run over by this lousy economy and you’re looking for something to make ya forget the gut-wrenching feeling that you’re a piece of roadkill lying on the side of the superhighway of the American dream, so you go to see that new Jim Carrey movie. He’s funny, … more…

We’ve seen the midlife-crisis comedy a hundred times before, but the smarts and the gentle wit of this one makes it a standout of the genre. Star Peter Riegert (Traffic) makes his feature directorial debut with this off-kilter gem, letting the humanity of his characters — even the unsurprisingly wacky ones, like his dad, played … more…

It’s sort of Romeo & Juliet, but with the same kind of urgency the story of star-crossed lovers must have had for the Bard’s first audience: Chimo (Mohammed Khouas) is a poor minority lad in Marseilles; Lila (Vahina Giocante) is an adolescent goddess, blonde and teasing; their teenage romance, alive with raw, unabashed lust, transforms … more…

Ismaël (Mathieu Amalric) believes that women have no souls because they live in bubbles, and that men’s souls are a consequence of their “living to die.” One can take that as a serious commentary on the states of men’s and women’s lives — on the practicality forced upon women as they deal with such basic … more…