View from the Top (review)

It’s all beer and skittles, strangely enough. No disgruntled passengers (except for the one Royalty Airlines instructor Mike Myers portrays for training and comedic purposes, though the comedy is as uncomfortable as coach), no terror alerts, no confiscation of tweezers, no bomb-sniffing dogs (though their noses would have been twitching at this flick in a second), no long lines at metal detectors.

Journeys with George and Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election (review)

I’m not a fan of Bush II. Hardly a surprise, I guess, seeing as how I’m one of those Blue-state namby-pamby liberal East Coast intellectual types. So I’m completely and unashamedly biased when it comes to films like *Journeys with George* — an illuminating travelogue of Bush’s 2000 campaign trail — *Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election,* an angry look at hanging chads, Katherine Harris, and the general fiasco in Florida.

Agent Cody Banks (review)

This uninspired and unabashed rip-off of Spy Kids puts that Malcolm in the Middle kid (Frankie Muniz: My Dog Skip) in James Bond’s shoes, threads, and wheels, doing little damage to either of its begetters but cribbing none of their energy, either, as it skitters across the screen and trots out junior-spy yucks so bland … more…

The Hunted (review)

Coming this Friday night, only to USA — or maybe TBS — THE HUNTED, starring Chuck Norris and Dean Cain!

Irreversible (review)

You think that you’ve seen it all, that movies have inured you to violence — or at least, to depictions of violence onscreen — and then you see a film like *Irreversible.* If you can work up the nerve for it.

Laurel Canyon (review)

The generation gap is back, only this time it’s Mom who’s the pot-smoking, sleeping-around, rock-‘n’-rollin’ hippie and Son who’s the buttoned-down, responsible square. Serious med student Sam (Christian Bale: Reign of Fire) and his serious grad-student fiancée Alex (Kate Beckinsale: Pearl Harbor) come back from school in the serious East to live — temporarily — … more…

Bend It Like Beckham movie review

It’s completely predictable and predictably feel-good, but so damn what? This is an utterly delightful flick, not for the least which reason is that it’s about complex, engaging, and realistically flawed young women devoting their lives to something more ambitious than chasing boys and buying cosmetics. London teenage Jesminder (Parminder K. Nagra) lives in a … more…

Bringing Down the House (review)

I am a white person. I am passionless. I’m probably intolerant and likely harbor racist attitudes. I don’t know how to shake my booty. I wear khakis. What I need is a sassy black friend to invade my house and throw wild parties and teach me how to get down. You know, for my own personal enlightenment. Because guns and felonies add spice to life, breaking and entering is cool, and being some kind of freaky is what being real is all about.

Tears of the Sun (review)

Can we just send Bruce Willis and Monica Bellucci to Iraq? Cuz then we’ll know that the Right things will be done and that everything will turn out Okay in the short term and that Love will Shine in the eyes of the Beautiful and Noble brown people of Iraqi and, most importantly, that we won’t have to deal with the possibly ugly aftermath of intervention because that all happens after the credits are over and the lights come up and we’ve gone home.

Shortcuts

These reviews have moved — sorry for the inconvenience. click here for Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony review click here for Bend It Like Beckham review click here for Chaos review click here for Confession of a Florist review click here for Dark Blue review click here for Darkness Falls review click here for … more…