Residing in a city with a film festival that has trouble getting its big name honorees to show up (failure might be impossible, but so is luring Pam Grier and Lainie Kazan to Upstate after Columbus Day), it practically made me giggle to hear that the 6th annual Sarasota Film Festival, which wrapped this past […]
Jon Popick
Posted inMovies
Hollywood’s trying to wink at us
I have two smiles. One comes from seeing a good movie. The other comes from seeing a funny movie. Neither smiles made a special guest appearance during my screening of Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! This is a picture we’re supposed to swallow as satire; the filmmakers think this two-bit, hare-brained, fleabag of an […]
Posted inMovies
Monster party at the theater
All you really need to know about Monster (opens Friday, January 23, at the Little), the new biopic about serial killer Aileen Wuornos, is that Charlize Theron’s gut is this year’s version of Nicole Kidman’s nose. They were both highly publicized alterations to ordinarily extraordinary-looking women in an attempt to bury them deep within the […]
Posted inMovies
Like you need to be cooler
If Owning Mahowny wasn’t a real story of a gambling-addicted, bad-luck protagonist who was ultimately incarcerated for embezzlement, its sequel might have been The Cooler (opens Friday, January 16, at the Little). This one is about a former casino junkie who parlayed his monumental bad luck into a gig where he’s paid to stand near […]
Posted inSpecial Sections
Killing Bill, Christ, and many more
We’re going to break from movie preview dogma a little bit here. Usually, I refuse to write about sequels or remakes. But one of each will be discussed in the following. I don’t know what to call Quentin Tarantino’s second installment of Kill Bill, since it’s both a sequel (technically) to Vol. 1 and […]
Posted inMovies
Sweet ‘Fish’ and bitter ‘Fog’
Tim Burton’s Big Fish (opens Friday, January 9) is a lot like that FedEx commercial where the young office worker suggests using the overnight delivery company to save money and then tells the story of his claim to fame over and over until the day he dies. Thankfully, the “story” in Fish is much more […]
Posted inMovies
Women stripping and kicking
If seeing a nude Diane Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give tested your gag reflex, you might want to skip Calendar Girls (opens Friday, January 2, at the Little Theatre). Instead of one middle-aged woman in her birthday suit, you get 11 in Girls. Even though Girls is based on a true story, it still […]
Posted inMovies
One ring to end it all
It’s over. Finally. And I think I’m glad, too. Waiting a year between installments is bad enough, but enduring the three-hour roller-coaster rides that make up the Lord of the Rings series is almost too much to bear. They’re too good. They’re too emotional. They’re also too long. The Return of the King (opens […]
Posted inMovies
Put some soul in your stocking
Amores Perros, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s stunning debut, was as groundbreaking, devastating, auspicious, and from as far out of left field as Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. His equally impressive follow-up, 21 Grams (opens Friday, December 26, at the Little Theatre), is nearly as accomplished as Pulp Fiction, and it should see just about as much action during […]
Posted inMovies
Ending the Cycle prematurely
I tried — mostly on a dare — to watch Matthew Barney’s entire six-hour-and-thirty-seven-minute Cremaster Cycle (also previewed by Alex Miokovic and Heidi Nickisher on page 18) over the course of one evening after being told it was a virtually impossible task. For starters, there’s the whole time commitment issue, and there’s some question over […]
Posted inMovies
Ditching Marilyn to fight a mummy
Anyone remember those old What If comics Marvel used to make that wondered how things might have turned out if certain scenarios had played out differently? I only have two that survived my childhood (“What if Elektra hadn’t died?” and “What if the Thing and the Beast continued to mutate?”), but the idea still seems […]
Posted inMovies
Slick Nick, you devil, you
People who write letters to newspapers complaining about nudity, cursing, and anti-Christmas content in Love Actually (Lobsters in the manger scene?Those heathens!)will die if they see Bad Santa (opens Wednesday, November 26). It will literally kill them. Their heads will explode like popcorn kernels, so be careful who you sit near in the theater. They […]
