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Remember when roller skates had eight wheels instead of a “blade” and Donna Summer’s “Last Dance” was always the final song of the rink session? Then you’re gonna love this exuberant homage to the brief, glorious time in American pop culture when disco reigned supreme and the skating rink was the teenage hangout on Saturday … more…
To be sure, this is a handsome adaptation of Charles Dickens’s classic tale of blah blah blah. All the bits are in place: the “Please, sir, I want some more,” the kindly coffin maker and his mean ol’ wife, the Artful Dodger and Fagin and Sykes, the saintly Mr. Brownlow, and through it all, one … more…
There’s a girl! There’s a girl on the wing of the movie!
She’s one of those definitively Generation X characters, the original latchkey kid, the first one left Home Alone: Pippi Longstocking, living on her own in the pastel Villa Villekulla without benefit of adult supervision and only a horse, Little Old Man, and a monkey, Mr. Nilsson, for company. Independently wealthy, thanks to her sailor-father’s adventures … more…
Funny? Sure, *Lord of War* is funny. Funny like how you’re not sure whether that headline is from Reuters or The Onion. Funny like how Jon Stewart has to insist that what he’s about to tell you really happened and is not the invention of his team of political wagsters. Satirical? Sure, *Lord of War* is satirical. Satirical like the front page of *The New York Times* is satirical. Satirical like how, at the end of Andrew Niccol’s black comedy about a relatively small-time freelance arms dealer, he tells us that the biggest arms dealers in the world are the nations that are the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
It’s sort of obvious in that Robert Redford-y way we’ve come to know of late: the rugged, wounded, horse-whispering nonsmoking Marlboro Man coming to terms with Life, the Universe, and Everything, particularly his own cantankerousness. But obviousness be damned. The insights into the kind of caged personal hells too many of us live in many … more…
Yup, this is the movie about the 17-year-old kid who still sucks his thumb. But don’t get too excited: there isn’t a lot of hot thumbsucking action or anything like that. Instead there’s a lot of adolescent angst, and the fact that it’s so achingly poignant and pointedly hilarious even if you’re way beyond high school makes me suspect that none of us ever really outgrow that teenage insecurity.
If you’ve seen one supernatural love story, then you’ve already seen *Just Like Heaven,* which is as instantly bland and forgettable as its title. It’s *Ghost* meets *While You Were Sleeping* plus *City of Angels,* with some *Topper* and *All of Me* thrown in because, why not? It’s not as if originality is a virtue in Hollywood…
Charles Ross stands on a black-box stage, dressed entirely in black, sans props and indeed any theatrical support of any kind beyond some simple lighting changes, and he brings to life the *Star Wars* trilogy in a way that, to devoted fans, is instantly recognizable at the same time that it is Ross’s own uniquely insane vision. His *One-Man Star Wars Trilogy* is a triumph of fannish adoration, of snarky commentary, of offbeat theater.
Picture the scene. A police interrogation room. The lighting is harsh. The chairs are hard. Miguel Ferrer is the badass internal affairs guy. Samuel L. Jackson is the rogue ATF agent who breaks rules but gets the job done. Ferrer thinks Jackson is dirty, is riding him hard, is gonna bring him down, dammit! Jackson goes nuclear in Ferrer’s face — he ain’t gonna take this shit no more!
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