Apathy on the Bounty. She hates him. He hates her. They drive each other crazy… Of COURSE they get back together; it’s a White American Romantic Comedy. Did you expect you’d have to use your brain to follow an actual plot or something? All I ask is that you don’t puke on my shoes. I’m having a hard enough time … Read More
BROTHERS
Broham Interruptus. Don’t you just hate it when your brother goes off to war and he supposedly gets killed, and you start putting the moves on his wife, and then he comes back? Don’t you just hate that?! What separates Jim Sheridan‘s BROTHERS from Michael Bay’s PEARL HARBOR (same plot, different war) is that BROTHERS is watchable. Starring Tobey Maguire … Read More
THE BLUE LAGOON 1980
Tarzan II: Electric Boogaloo. The very plot of THE BLUE LAGOON makes it a movie that can never be fully realized as entertainment or as the thought experiment it was conceived to be in the 1903 novel by Henry De Vere Stacpoole: two young kids stranded on a desert island must learn to live with nature, each other, and avoid … Read More
BIG FAN
Drama is Easy, Comedy is Hard. I was not a fan of Patton Oswalt as a comedian. It took his remarkable dramatic performance in this movie to make me take a second look at his comedy. Now, I’m a big fan… (Is that good or bad?…) Oswalt plays Paul Aufiero, the eponymous BIG FAN of the New York Giants, whose … Read More
BLADES OF GLORY
On thin ice. How much gayer can BLADES OF GLORY possibly be? Answer: None more gay. The words ‘Will Ferrell’ and ‘professional sports’ have no reason to be in the same sentence together. Somehow they keep happening. In BLADES OF GLORY, Ferrell is ice skating champion Chazz Michael Michaels, whose raunchy routines on the ice earned him the moniker “skating’s … Read More
BATMAN FOREVER
From Dark Knight to Boogie Knight. After Tim Burton gave us the brooding BATMAN (1989) and the dark-yet-kinda-silly BATMAN RETURNS, he relinquished the director’s chair to Joel Schumacher, who promptly made Batman fruitier than Adam West. In BATMAN FOREVER, the third installment of the modern Batman legacy, Val Kilmer is the fruit bat whom we cannot be sure is hero … Read More
THE BOX
Filmmaking Outside The Box. DONNIE DARKO meets INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. I put this movie into the DVD player without prior knowledge of its makers or pedigree. As I watched, I couldn’t help thinking of the two above references, with a heavy sprinkling of TWILIGHT ZONE. Lo and behold, it’s the writer-director of DARKO at the helm, Richard Kelly. … Read More
BLOOD WORK
Anemic Harry. If Dirty Harry was a heart transplant patient. In BLOOD WORK, Clint Eastwood is FBI detective Terry McCaleb, who suffers a heart attack chasing down a thief. Forced to retire after a heart transplant operation, he is approached by the transplant donor’s sister, Graciella (Wanda De Jesús) who tells him his donor was a murder victim. She wants … Read More
BANGKOK DANGEROUS
I was a Teenage Hitman. As a dead man’s blood seeps across bathroom tiles, the opening titles to BANGKOK DANGEROUS appear in it. From its first scene, this movie is art. Writers-directors-brothers Danny and Oxide Pang launch BANGKOK DANGEROUS at us with the intensity of an adjective incorrectly following a noun, in the story of a hitman who finds redemption. … Read More
THE BIRTH OF A NATION
The Bitch Of A Nation. To us, Mr. Griffith was the movie industry. It had been born in his head. — Lillian Gish, actress. I’m not a film scholar, but does watching this movie make me one?… Back when there was no internet or breast augs or Conan O’Brien, people got their entertainment by watching the first moving pictures. D.W. … Read More
BANGKOK DANGEROUS 2008
Bangkok Mildly Threatening. We just have to accept it for what it is. Comparing BANGKOK DANGEROUS 2008 to its original 1999 version is like comparing AMERICAN IDOL karaoke wannabes to real vocalists in hardworking rock bands. The original BANGKOK DANGEROUS (1999) – with its unassailable hook of the deaf mute teenage Bangkok hitman – wipes the floor with 2008’s version. … Read More
THE BOOK OF ELI
When Gunslingers Get Religion. Comes a time when you’re just sick of the descriptor “post-apocalyptic.” What happened to simply, “The Near Future” and letting our imaginations extrapolate on what blasted the hell out of Middle America? (Could it have been those religious fanatics with the Weapons of Mass Destruction – you know, the American government?) So in THE BOOK OF … Read More
THE BREAKFAST CLUB
The Neo Maxi Zoom Dweeby of Teen Angst. So this is where the punch dance was invented! Ah, to know what we know now, back then. How many times has that lament been our adult refrain? Well, these kids actually do! At least, they know back then what John Hughes knows now. About us back then. THE BREAKFAST CLUB put … Read More
BODY OF LIES
Pants on Fire! Little Boy Leo is now Big Bad DiCaprio. In BODY OF LIES, Leo has finished growing the beard he started in BLOOD DIAMOND and is neck deep in Syriana. He is undercover CIA operative Ferris, stationed in the Middle East, embroiled in an undercover plot to plant a Taliban newbie as a rising demagogue, in order to … Read More
BRUNO
Social Commentary with a Depilated Sphincter. Not for the faint-hearted or the weak-minded, but definitely for the limp-wristed and the ball-shaven, BRÜNO drags us like fag hags through the darkest recesses of the human psyche. Exactly like BORAT, only gayer. Like a freight train thundering on homosexually steel wheels, tapping a pygmy lover with a penchant for champagne bottles up … Read More
BOLT
O.D. on QT. If cuteness ever becomes a sin, this movie is going straight to hell. BOLT (voiced by John Travolta) is a little white puppy that was raised from birth as a superdog. Well, he’s not really a superdog – but HE doesn’t know that. For the sake of realistic reactions from Bolt, the producers of his weekly television … Read More
BEDTIME STORIES
Wish it into the Cornfield. Idiotic and contradictory messages fly at us like fart jokes in a movie bankrupt of ideas, which BEDTIME STORIES is. Without the fart jokes. Skeeter Bronson (Adam Sandler), a shiftless janitor, discovers while babysitting his sister’s (Courteney Cox) children, that the stories they make up at bedtime are actually coming true for him. Ever the … Read More
THE BACKWOODS
Even in Spain, there’s a Deep South. Shades of STRAW DOGS and dabbles in DELIVERANCE, THE BACKWOODS is an exploration of deep south justice – in Spain. Two Brits with their European wives holiday in the backwoods of Spain; Paul and Isabel (Gary Oldman and Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), and Norman and Lucy (Paddy Considine and Virginie Ledoyen). The two men go … Read More
BEERFEST
Roaring, Rogering, Gorging and Puking… sign me up. It’s seven o’clock and I wanna rock Wanna get a belly full of beer… — Elton John, Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting). They’re not Monty Python… but they’re on their way. Broken Lizard’s BEERFEST (directed by team member, Jay Chandresakar) is a drunken, disorderly, swelling knob of a film, as quirkingly funny … Read More
THE BOURNE SUPREMACY
Bourne Again. In THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, Matt Damon IS (still) Jason Bourne. The superspy from THE BOURNE IDENTITY (2002) is STILL on the lam, from the people who STILL want him dead – his ex-employers STILL at the CIA. Even though they’ve almost forgotten him at the opening of this movie, he lays low in India with his Euro chick, … Read More