reviews

This is what the world needs: more movies about challenging the status quo and bucking the system and not taking no for an answer when you know you’re right and being true to yourself because you have no choice but to do so. The world needs more movies about girls smashing patriarchal bullshit and claiming their rightful places in society, and fewer films about girls being kooky ‘nonconformist’ by tripping adorably klutzy over their own feet and larding around Europe wearing lip gloss and claiming as their greatest accomplishment in life falling in love with guys with accents.

Wahlberg is quite capable within his range — somewhere in the vicinity of the sweetly befuddled Everyman — which he doesn’t stray too far from here. And Norton is canny enough to know that a bit of ham and cheese is exactly what’s called for in a movie in which the automobiles are the big stars. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It’s no Evil Dead 2 — what is? — but when you pit kung-fu against the undead, it’s bound to be midnight-movie-riffic, and the less sense it makes, the more fun it becomes. We’re in rural 19th-century China and surrounded by hopping zombies who want your tasty flesh so they can transform into flying vampires … more…

The impossibly long lines that crawl imperceptibly toward a surly counter agent. The information boards reading DELAYED CANCELLED DELAYED CANCELLED. The cranky would-be passengers. The bad, overpriced food. The nightmare of being stranded at an airport gets a little more interesting and a lot more frustrating, in a wholly unexpected way, for two strangers who … more…

Item! Who’d have thought that today, in swingin’, happenin’ 1962, we’d have to report that New York’s most confirmed bachelor, *Know* magazine writer Catcher Block, has been seen gadding about town with none other than women’s libber Barbara Novak, author of the anti-romance book *Down with Love.* Who’s kiddin’ who here, kids?

See, the first thing I’d do if I was God for a week would be to cast ‘director’ Tom Shadyac into a nice, deep, despairing pit of hell, where there’s nothing to do but watch *Dragonfly* and *Patch Adams* over and over. I know: then I’d be like, oh, everyone onscreen in *Bruce Almighty,* with a lazy selfishness and a desire to dodge reality substituting for spirituality. But clearly, Shadyac must be stopped. This is only his latest in a long line of offenses to the human race.

Twentysomething Ágúst (Hilmir Snaer Gudnason) escaped the remote Icelandic village of his birth — he now lives in Paris, writes songs, and woos Frenchwomen — but it seems he can’t escape the legacy of his father, Thódur Haraldsson (Gunnar Eyjolfsson), the local fishing magnate. Thódur has called his far-flung children home to discuss the future … more…

What is it about the human psyche that never allows us to be happy with our lives, that keeps us constantly reassessing the choices we’ve made and envying those who took other roads? There’s probably no real answer to that, but here director Patrice Leconte and writer Claude Klotz offer a piquant and poignantly humorous … more…