reviews

You had me at hello, Mr. The Rock. You lost me later, sure, though it’s more the movie itself that lost me, not you yourself per se. But with the knowing twinkle in your eye that starts twinkling knowingly right at the outset and never stops, and the sly grin dazzling with all those supernaturally white teeth and the not-taking-this-too-seriously thing, you had me right then. The vibe works, the big-dumb-lug with smarts, with wit, with an inkling of class, with a surprising lightness and limberness that should be at odds with your imposing physical presence but isn’t.

It’s like if Bob Vila made a thriller: ‘Booga booga booga! Be careful which house you choose to renovate– Ooo, look at that beautiful original 19th-century molding!’ Some spoiled rotten yuppies decide they’re fed up with the big city and chuck it all to move to the country, which is never a good idea under the best of circumstances and goes especially horribly wrong here. Which is kinda metaphoric for the movie as a whole, too — movies about arrogant city slickers rubbing the countryfolk the wrong way are rarely a good idea, and here particularly so.

Prepare for major throat lumpage by the end of this buoyant coming-of-age tale, elevated to a glorious level by its extraordinary cast. Walter (Haley Joel Osment: A.I. Artificial Intelligence), 14 years old, neglected by his mother (Kyra Sedgwick), and adrift on the sea of directionless adolescence, is dumped for the summer with his crazy old … more…

So, I’m confused. When you become a vampire, do they issue you the gothy, lacey, leathery all-black wardrobe? Or are only people who already dress in gothy all-black leather-and-lacey stuff susceptible to vampirism?

You usually can’t go wrong with a flick in which warriors ride into battle on elephants, and yet this stolid and solemn slice of Thai history manages to make pachyderm cavalry — and bare-breasted amazons and multiple beheadings and bad omens and gruesome poisonings and invading legions and general palace intrigue — surprisingly dull. Filmmaker … more…

Poor Elijah Wood. Not only must he suffer the indignity of a direct-to-video release so soon after his Lord of the Rings triumph, but it’s at the hands of writer Charles Kephart, whose pallid teen comedy tries so hard to be cutesy and precious and adorably wacky, and director Jeffrey Porter, who took Kephart’s script … more…

Man oh man. Once again, it all comes down to Johnny Depp. I know, this is supposed to be all about Rodriguez wrapping up the El Mariachi trilogy, putting some finishing touches on the whole revenge story, crossing Ts and dotting Is and being done with it. And then outta left field comes Depp, stealing the film from Antonio Banderas’s piercing gaze and deliciously impenetrable accent and Salma Hayek’s petulant pout and bodacious bod and Rodriguez’s explosions and slo-mo gunfights, taking what’s basically a supporting role and making the film all about him.

If you want an idea of what New York was like in the immediate days after 9/11, here you go. For me, it’s a shattering reminder — not that I need one — of that lost daze all us New Yorkers wandered around in for weeks in the fall of 2001. I pretty much start sobbing as *The Guys* opens, with footage from a firehouse security camera, one lone fireman in shorts standing on the sidewalk, just watching the world go by; the timestamp reads 09.11.01 8:48am, the last innocent moment before a shower of office paper starts to fall in the street.

Eleven directors from around the world react to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, each film exactly 11 minutes, 9 seconds long (11-9 was the date in the inverted European system). The results are personal and political, abstract and straightforward, bittersweet and mournful, angry and searching: for an understanding of the attacks themselves and … more…