Here we are, firmly ensconced in January, and now that the holidays are over you want to relax with a movie. You’ve already nibbled on some Oscar bait (The Aviator, Closer) and you’re patiently awaiting the next course (Million Dollar Baby, House of Flying Daggers). So you look in the paper… hey, how about Spanglish? […]
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Less than scientific proof of life
There’s a scene in the early ’90s Cameron Crowe film Singles where Bridget Fonda’s character Janet goes to toss a paper towel into the trash and bases whether she should call this guy she likes on whether she sinks the shot. It always stuck with me because I have often sought answers using the “If […]
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Also playing…
“It’s often ‘oh those goofy glasses’ syndrome that we get,” says Daniel Symmes, whose Dimension 3 Company is the world’s largest manufacturer of 3-D glasses. “The bottom line though, is the public lines up to see 3-D whenever it’s done. It’s always a successful phenomenon.” 3-D movies came about somewhat accidentally in the 19th century. […]
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Sex, science, and American culture
Anyone who believes that the nation has progressed intellectually, educationally, or culturally in the last 50 years should take a long, hard look at Kinsey. The film biography of the pioneer sexual researcher Alfred Kinsey provides an important lesson in American attitudes toward sex, science, and especially truth, and in the surprisingly contemporary facile politicizing […]
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To the end of time
In his immortal play Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie bequeathed to the ages one of the strangest and most enduring visions of childhood in all of literature. His was an ambiguous fantasy of freedom from time, from parents, even from gravity itself. In his world, a large dog worked as a family’s nanny, a flying […]
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The newest Andersonian
By choosing to make movies, Wes Anderson may have missed out on a lucrative career as a high-wire artist. He has constantly walked the tightrope throughout his three previous films — Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums — between quirky and contrived, clever and clumsy, moving and maudlin. But he has always made the […]
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With another caper, another crew
Hollywood’s familiar tendency to repeat itself, in the form of sequels and remakes, occasionally results in some entertaining and even artistically successful motion pictures — The Empire Strikes Back, the second chapter in the Star Wars series, for example, and that great American document, The Godfather, Part II. Remakes as different as, say, the second […]
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Also playing… love is a complicated thing
The thing about documentaries is they are what they are. It’s not fair to critique the narrative because that can turn into passing judgment on its subject. You could discuss the filmmaker’s technique, but there’s usually not much to say about filming a true story. And that’s why this review of Tarnation was so hard, […]
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Coupling, uncoupling, recoupling
Given his track record, it seems entirely appropriate that Mike Nichols should direct the film adaptation of Patrick Marber’s play Closer. He began his career as an actor — and his films suggest that he works sensitively with actors — and maintains a close relationship with the theater both as director and producer. Although he […]
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Lessons in being passive and aggressive
It probably seemed like a simple proposition: Award-winning documentary filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky would be granted unlimited access to Metallica, underground speed-metal band turned platinum-selling behemoth, while they wrote and recorded their next album. Berlinger and Sinofsky already had a relationship with the group, having used its music for the intense Paradise Lost: […]
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Also playing…
Every artistic endeavor begins with a concept. Any work of art that achieves the highest level of success does so because the final outcome realizes and even surpasses the original concept. For every masterpiece by Henri Cartier-Bresson, there are thousands of photographers who develop an idea with infinite potential, yet never produce that brilliance in […]
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Conquering a world, ruining a movie
With its technological expertise, its abundance of talent in all areas, and its penchant for excess, the American cinema quite naturally excels at the grand gesture, which often translates as the epic mode. Some recent cinematic investigations of certain chapters in the distant past — Gladiator, The Passion of the Christ, Troy, and now, Alexander […]
