If folklore, oral tradition, and the Brothers Grimm hadn’t transmitted the Cinderella tale down through the years, surely Hollywood would have invented it. Centuries of stories and generations of movies about a poor, but worthy, young woman who falls in love with a man of higher station, overcomes the obstacles of isolation and oppression, and […]
Movie Reviews
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Alien body double
More than three decades ago, the television show Star Trek first chronicled the voyages of the starship Enterprise as it ventured through distant galaxies and strange seas of thought — “boldly going,” as the voice-over stated, “where no man had gone before.” Those journeys almost always included a confrontation with an alien species or civilization, […]
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The Gang’s all here — let the Oscar race begin
Gangs of New York, the year’s most eagerly anticipated film (aside from the one following this review), plays like a who’s who of AWOL Hollywood heavyweights. Director Martin Scorsese hasn’t been seen in theaters since Kundun in 1997 (I like to pretend Bringing Out the Dead never happened). Ditto for stars Daniel Day-Lewis (1997’s The […]
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The gangster and the psychiatrist
Analyze That, the sequel to the funny and successful Analyze This (1999) — the titles certainly display a nice logic — demonstrates a complicated and comical series of internal connections to both the fictions and the reality of that popular Hollywood subject, the Mafia. While most obviously referring back to its predecessor, the movie also […]
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Bad actress plays bad actress — details at 11
I’m going to be honest with you, dear readers. I haven’t budgeted my time properly and now, faced with the problem of having to both watch and critique a two-and-a-half hour movie in approximately two-and-a-half hours, I’ve decided to try something new and exciting (and timesaving) — the simultaneous viewing and reviewing of a film. […]
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Deep ideas in Solaris’ ocean world
Editor’s note: Thanks to a holiday scheduling snafu, we here present another review of Solaris. Yes, this does mean the film is extra good. Some students of science fiction prefer to call the genre speculative fiction, an appropriate term for works that can encourage responses of a greater complexity than the entertainment and escapism […]
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Animation for adults
A must-see for Japanimaniacs, those interested in Japanese folklore, or anyone weary of the boring stories that typically accompany American animation, Miyazaki’s Spirited Away is a refreshing new take on Alice in Wonderland. The film, which destroyed box office records in Japan, knocking Titanic out of the top spot (which, in turn, had bested the […]
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Bond’s returns, saves civilization again(yawn)
The appearance of Die Another Day demonstrates once again that after some 20 films, a handful of 007 impersonators, dozens of beautiful women, plots and situations that pretty much repeat themselves over and over, and a batch of recognizable conventions, the James Bond movies constitute a genre all their own. They influence the innumerable action-adventure […]
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A planet to make you think, another to make you drink
I think we might be asking too much of our movie-going audience. After a summer full of arthouse films disguised as blockbusters, Hollywood thought they could sneak Punch-Drunk Love in the back door without anyone noticing that Adam Sandler didn’t do any of his crazy voices or sing “The Chanukah Song” in it. I recently […]
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Chamber Potter mixture as before
Wisely perceiving (and abhorring) a vacuum between Halloween and Thanksgiving, the producers of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets apparently decided to anticipate the holidays and kick off the season a trifle early. Since their movie will assuredly harvest many millions of dollars and will probably still be playing somewhere at Easter, the maneuver […]
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As subtle as a club to the head
The Emperor’s Club was originally going to be called The Palace Thief, after the Ethan Canin short story upon which it’s based. But the film’s producers must have reasoned, “Heck, we’ve already ripped off Dead Poet’s Society; we may as well pinch its name, too.” (Rumor has it that another suggested title was Mr. Hundert’s […]
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De Palma’s Femme Fatale just a ittle tease
Brian De Palma’s new film, Femme Fatale, begins in darkness, with the muffled but gradually recognizable voices of Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck speaking on the sound track. As light filters by degrees into the frame, the audience sees a television screen showing the climactic scene between the two lovers in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity. […]
