Instinct (review)
Here we go again. Humans bad; all other animals good. Civilization bad; nature good. I ranted about this attitude in The Thin Red Line, and, be warned, I’m about to do it again.
reviews
Apt Pupil (review)
Writer Stephen King has made a career of scaring us not with blood and guts but with cerebral psychological thrillers. Director Bryan Singer, with his The Usual Suspects, showed us that he’s aware of the squirmy, manipulative power of evil. Pair these two up, and you get the coolly brutal Apt Pupil.
The Thirteenth Floor (review)
Cerebral but passionless, The Thirteenth Floor is the latest in the current wave of reality-questioning, existentialistic science fiction, though it unfortunately has nothing new to offer.
Sliding Doors movie review: doors open, doors close
How would my life be different if only I’d taken the road not taken? This fun little movie favors an inevitability, a brand of destiny about who we meet and what we do…
You’ve Got Mail (review)
What You’ve Got Mail fails to reveal, in its startling romanticization of e-mail and cyberculture, is that the enchanting person whom you’ve been IMing and e-mailing for the last three months is more likely than not a 45-year-old virgin sitting at a PC in his parents’ basement and typing with one hand. No, the chances are not good that the person to whom you’re revealing your innermost secrets is either Tom Hanks or Meg Ryan.
The Love Letter (review)
Like a New England version of Northern Exposure, The Love Letter is full of intriguingly offbeat characters — from the nosy postmistress to the suspicious cop to Helen’s dotty grandmother (Titanic’s Gloria Stuart) to Miss Scattergoods (Geraldine McEwan), who works at the local historical society — with their own romantic secrets. Unsentimental and wonderfully modest, The Love Letter is that rare pleasure: a prickly yet succulent romantic comedy.
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace movie review: fandom access
Honestly, I’d pay cash money to see either Liam Neeson or Ewan McGregor on his own read from the phone book, and the two of them together is almost too delicious to bear.
This Is My Father and The Matchmaker (review)
I don’t think there’s such a thing as a happy love story in all of Irish literature. Ballads always end with the girl throwing herself in the river now that her beloved has married someone else or the lonely old bachelor discovering that the man he saw his girl with at the ball twenty years before was actually her brother. Something about the Irish disposition just seems to necessitate a dollop — or more — of tragedy mixed in with the romance. (Probably it’s the fear of burning in hell if one enjoys oneself too much.) This Is My Father and The Matchmaker, while two very different films, nevertheless have this contradictory Irish attitude in common.
Fantasia movie review: my god, it’s full of stars
I saw a rerelease of *Fantasia* in Radio City Music Hall when I was probably 6 or 7, and the ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ sequence scared the bejeezus out of me. It still does.
City of Angels (review)
The best love stories have an element of danger about them — not physical, but emotional, psychical. You trade a part your soul for someone else’s when you fall in love, and it is inexcusable for a story about a character whose business is souls not to even touch on this. Glossy but with no heart, City of Angels is a smooth, unchallenging bit of fluff, about as romantic as a Hallmark card.
