The new Denzel Washington film, Out of Time, suggests something about how far Hollywood and American popular culture have traveled in a generation. The writer and director may very well have intended simply to make a taut, exciting thriller celebrating the heritage of classic film noir. However, their movie, inadvertently or not, provides a curious […]
Movie Reviews
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Quivering over Quentin’s queasy comeback
First, let’s put some of the rumors to bed: Quentin Tarantino always envisioned Kill Bill as a two-volume opus — he just didn’t spring the idea on Miramax until things were nearly finished. Volume 1 actually lends itself to episodes better than, say, The Matrix Reloaded or either of the first two Lord of the […]
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Italy of the American imagination
While most authors dream of literary success followed by cinematic success, most film producers attempt to exploit the public awareness that a best seller creates along with its built-in audience. The right combination of a blockbuster book with a profitable counterpart in film represents a publicist’s dream, a marriage made perhaps not in heaven, but […]
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Black and White and great all over
Leave it to edgy indie auteurs Richard Linklater (director of Waking Life) and Mike White (screenwriter-star of The Good Girl and Chuck & Buck) to take a genre that’s been completely rubbed into the ground and left for dead by hack after hack and make it into something fresh and exciting, not to mention really […]
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Lost in perfection, or Tokyo
There are several scenes in Lost in Translation (opens Friday, September 26, at the Little), Sofia Coppola’s brilliant follow-up to The Virgin Suicides, that were blindingly hysterical on the big screen. But somehow, as I sit down to write this review, they just don’t seem as funny on my little screen. I know what I […]
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Sex and punishment in Ireland
A scene occurring rather late in The Magdalene Sisters shows a group of female inmates of a peculiar Irish Catholic institution known as a Magdalene Asylum, along with the nuns who supervise them, gathered on Christmas Day to watch a movie effusively introduced by the mother superior. The movie of course is The Bells of […]
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Mingling comics and real life
In a no doubt apocryphal scene purportedly from the protagonist Harvey Pekar’s life, American Splendor opens with the young Harvey out Halloween trick-or-treating with some other boys. His friends are all dressed as superheroes — Batman, Superman, etc. — but Harvey steadfastly rejects costumes and maintains his own identity. The moment sums up most of […]
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From burqas to bunnies: a second dose of Toronto
Here’s the dirt on the second half of the Toronto International Film Festival, which just ended Saturday (September 13) evening. The Good The Brown Bunny: Vincent Gallo’s notorious road-trip flick, which was booed out of Cannes this past May (it was an unfinished print that ran 30 minutes longer than the final version screened here), […]
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Making stew with the neurotic confidence man
The appearance of the new movie Matchstick Men underlines the surprising versatility of its director, Ridley Scott. He at times seems something of a throwback to the old studio system, when a great many talented, dedicated, hard-working people turned out all sorts of motion pictures without a great deal of thought about how they would […]
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Sorting out films, from feel-goods to yawners
From the thick of the 28th Toronto International Film Festival, here is the lowdown on the most notable films so far. The Good Coffee & Cigarettes: Not so much a film as a collection of shorts Jim Jarmusch started making back in 1986 (for Saturday Night Live, no less). Each features a few actors sitting […]
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Treating decay with boredom
Beginning with its title, which promises something quirky and unusual, the new movie from Alan Rudolph depends upon a number of deceptions, intended or not, that may fool the public (as, judging by the superlatives in the advertisements, they have already fooled the reviewers) into actually paying money to see it. Rudolph himself has spent […]
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Losing their way in the Middle East
There are a pair of 40-minute Middle Eastern films screening at the Dryden Theatre this Saturday (September 6). Each makes its Rochester debut and each arrives with buckets full of praise from people whose hearts go out to the ridiculously oppressed citizens of the countries represented by the shorts (Yemen and Iran). I don’t […]
