reviews

Bursting with a bitterness tinged with joy and humor, like Frida Kahlo’s work itself, this life of the artist brings her out from Diego Rivera’s considerable shadow and into her own long-overdue spotlight. With a rare sensitivity and understanding of the psychology of creativity, Salma Hayek (Wild Wild West) as Kahlo and director Julie Taymor … more…

(Best of 2002) On a gray January Sunday in 1972, in Derry, Northern Ireland, British soldiers opened fire with live ammunition on unarmed, peaceful demonstrators, killing 13. Shocking and visceral, writer/director Paul Greengrass’s documentary-style re-creation of the horrifying events of that day pulls no punches, bluntly depicting the powder-keg atmosphere of the city: the disquieting … more…

*8 Mile.* Also known as *The Eminem Movie.* Because everyone knows that anyone who sells lots of CDs will automatically sell lots of movie tickets.

Teen boys and young men, the intended audience for this breathtakingly idiotic mess of an action flick, are unlikely to have even heard of the original 60s series, one of the few to escape endless syndication, so why was it necessary to besmirch the memory of a beloved classic like this? Moronic even on the … more…

It’s not too suspicious, is it, that the every-28-days, beware-the-moon rhythm to werewolf tales is so similar to the female menstrual cycle? Are lycanthropes a mythic way for men to appropriate some female sexuality, so legendarily mysterious and arcane to the male gender? Werewolves are almost exclusively male, after all, and lycanthropy is almost exclusively tied to a ramping up of male libido. (Insert your own ‘Oh, you’re such an animal…’ joke here.) And it seems like the last 30 years — and in particular the 1980s — were rife with werewolf movies, in a period when women were becoming more sexually independent than they’d ever been before.

What a cast: Gabriel Byrne, Julianna Margulies, Ron Eldard, Isaiah Washington! What a waste! What are they doing in a movie so moronic that it doesn’t even deserve to go straight to video without its supper? I know, I know: They’re paying the bills. Perhaps the better question is: Why are talented actors forced into … more…

Now, there’s not really any overlap between Grant’s niche and Wahlberg’s niche, and in any right-thinking universe, no one would attempt to shoehorn Wahlberg into a Cary Grant role. Unfortunately, as hardly anyone needs to be told and which is amply demonstrated by *The Truth About Charlie,* we do not live in a right-thinking universe.

Traffic screenwriter Stephen Gaghan, in his directorial debut, demonstrates how poor execution can doom a pretty good script… his own pretty good script. His suspense drama of an overburdened, emotionally fragile college senior, her missing boyfriend, and the anguished cop who’s trying to find him probably sounded a lot more shrewd and perhaps even profound … more…