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 […]
Movies
Posted inMovies
The first daughter on the lam
Sometimes the serious contemplation of contemporary cinema leads one down the dark and winding path of depression and despair. The release of Chasing Liberty, a movie apparently intended as a vehicle for the alleged pop singer Mandy Moore, prompts a measure of that contemplation and certainly a good deal more than a modicum of melancholy. […]
Posted inMovies
Trading history for the future
Hollywood owes a considerable debt to the fertile genius of the late Philip K. Dick, the prolific science fiction writer whose work has inspired a variety of highly imaginative and highly successful movies: Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, and now, Paycheck. Unlike many of his colleagues, Dick concentrated on subjects and situations transcending the […]
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
A touch of Homer in a grand American story
Although critics constantly announce their discovery of fashions and trends, as Senator Eugene McCarthy noted of the New Hampshire primary, what looks like ground swell may turn out to be merely a frost heave. It may seem remarkable, however, that two grand military epics set in the 19th century should open within weeks of each […]
Posted inMovies
Love among the ruins
Just two years ago, Innocence, an Australian film directed by Paul Cox, dramatized the unusual possibility (unusual for cinema anyway) of a sexual relationship between two elderly people, who renew the love of their vanished youth with a genuine and touching passion. In contrast to that quiet, bittersweet romance, conducted within the context of […]
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
Even the nonconformists are familiar
Although it hardly constitutes a major genre, the academic picture, the movie about college students and professors, remains a moderately popular form for filmmakers and film audiences. When college flicks concentrate on students, they tend to move into anarchic comedy or slaughterhouse horror, both entirely suitable for the young demographic Hollywood loves so dearly. When […]
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
Magic and healing on the Western frontier
Although a single swallow, as Aristotle reminds us, doesn’t make a summer, some viewers may be forgiven for hoping that three Westerns can constitute a trend. The release of Open Range, The Last Samurai (despite its setting in Japan, very much an example of the form), and now, The Missing within the span of a […]
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 […]
