In Envy, Jack Black and Ben Stiller play coworkers. Black invents something that makes dog waste disappear. Stiller fails to invest in the cockamamie scheme and loses out on the resultant windfall. Black builds a life of absurd, cartoon opulence across the street from his friend. Stiller becomes envious and reckless. Everything about this […]
Movies
Posted inMovies
Bloody revenge in Mexico
In his somewhat uneven record of achievement in cinema, the English director Tony Scott exhibits a certain faith in the tried and the true, especially if he is the one who did the trying. His earliest big success, Top Gun (1986), for example, starred Tom Cruise as a hot dog jet pilot who grows […]
Posted inMovies
Also playing: failed suicides and class wars
Lone Scherfig’s first foray into filmmaking, the darkly sweet comedy Italian for Beginners, was one of the most enjoyable foreign films of this young century despite being made under the rigid guidelines of the Danish cinema movement Dogme 95. The “Vow of Chastity,” as cooked up by filmmakers Lars von Trier (The Idiots) and […]
Posted inMovies
Separating history from legend
Glorious defeats and lost causes endure in the imagination far longer than any great victories. The idea of Custer’s Last Stand outlives the truth of the Western campaigns against the Indians; it’s the South, not the North, that keeps the Civil War alive; and any visitor to Europe will notice that monuments to the fallen […]
Posted inMovies
Revenge is a dish best served by a Dane
Something’s rotten in Denmark. Or on a soundstage in Denmark, anyway, which for the purposes of Dogville stands in for a small town in the Rockies during the Depression. Well, the chalk outlines of a town, because aside from those and some furniture, that is all we see of it. Director Lars Von Trier (Dancer […]
Posted inMovies
‘A naked American man stole my balloons’
His name is John Landis. And his irreverent, playful, and deadpan humor has been making audiences laugh since he dropped out of school at age 17. He learned filmmaking by doing, by asking questions, and by working on Hollywood film sets as a mail boy, a production assistant, and a stuntman. This hands-on experience helped […]
Posted inMovies
The Tarantino touch once again
Like him or not — and most of the time I don’t — Quentin Tarantino really deserves a measure of credit for his cinematic version of a bold, clever con game. Like the Coen brothers, he introduces a strain of irony into his pictures with the equivalent of a wink and a nudge that […]
Posted inMovies
Also playing… The films of Chris Marker
“He wrote me…” This is the mantra of Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil(Sunless). A woman reads in voiceover what a friend has written her, as footage he has shot plays out underneath in rapid, random succession. The film is a sort of travelogue, mostly of Japan and Africa, and the words are a travelogue of […]
Posted inMovies
Also playing… Local boy makes good (film)
Rochester native and screenwriter-director Steve Anderson returns Thursday, April 15, for a special local showing of his first film, The Big Empty, at the Little Theater. Anderson will answer questions following the 7 p.m. screening. The 42-year-old Anderson grew up in Pittsford and graduated from NazarethCollege. He moved to Los Angeles in 1989 and […]
Posted inMovies
Moving the Brits to Mississippi
Despite a decidedly spotty, often shabby, occasionally even sordid record, English cinema displays a number of bright moments and impressive achievements. In addition to some quite remarkable directors and a legion of accomplished actors, in certain periods of their history British motion pictures virtually bubble with energy. While showcasing such talents as Alec Guinness […]
Posted inMovies
Also playing…
The Dryden presents on the next two Tuesdays a series of films by Chris Marker. Marker, among other things, is a film essayist, and two recent, well-regarded films will be shown during the first night’s screening. (Two classics will be shown during the second, and will be reviewed here next week.) One Day in […]
Posted inMovies
Also playing…
There is definitely something shocking about watching a major Hollywood heartthrob punch a woman in the face. To witness it on screen, however, is slightly more palatable than, say, seeing it happen at a corner table at Spago. That sock to the puss, along with a U2 song that’s about 25 years old at […]
