There are more than a handful of high-profile films in theaters right now, and they’re all vying for both Oscar attention and your hard-earned money. Two of them happen to be the directorial debut of even higher-profile, larger-than-life movie stars, and, coincidentally, both focus on real people and actual events. But that’s where the similarities […]
Movies
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Don’t be afraid of Virginia Woolf
In Virginia Woolf’s first book, The Voyage Out, a character expresses the desire to write a novel about all the things that people don’t say, an ambition that the author herself fulfilled in a later book entitled The Waves. Steadfastly devoted to that interior life and those unspoken thoughts and feelings, inclined to close observation […]
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The rebirth of cool
On the surface, Narc sounds like the kind of flick that should be going straight to either video or cable. I had never heard of the director (Joe Carnahan), and the two leads (Jason Patric and Ray Liotta) are hardly the stuff of dreams. So what am I missing here? Why the hell is this […]
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An extraordinary, ordinary man
The opening sequences of his last two movies provide some proof that Jack Nicholson’s much discussed new maturity is not simply one of those inventions of the publicity folks and their accomplices in the entertainment media. Both The Pledge and About Schmidt introduce Nicholson’s character at a retirement party, thus indicating that unlike many Hollywood […]
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The loneliest piano player in the world
The Pianist is the first film director Roman Polanski has made in Poland since his very first feature. It’s also, according to the press notes, the film he’s waited his entire career to make. It’s too bad he waited so long, because if Polanski had made The Pianist a little earlier into his career, it […]
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Making nice with the musical
Let me preface this review by saying I generally despise musicals in a very, very serious way. I still have nightmares about Moulin Rouge, and the mere thought of seeing The Producers on Broadway is nearly enough to make me vomit blood. I bought my mom the Sound of Music DVD last Christmas, with the […]
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Running away from life’s troubles
There are an alarming number of mediocre movies that have grand designs on educating moviegoers about important historical events. As a critic, I’m put in a weird situation in which I’m obligated to point out a picture’s weaknesses, but do so at the risk of incurring the wrath of readers for whom whatever real-life event […]
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Cinderella’s coach rolls again
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 […]
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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. […]
