Confessions of a Superhero (Arts Alliance) As one of those quoted on the package (“A more beautiful documentary you’re unlikely to find”), I can only reiterate my earlier praise: Matt Ogens’s doc, about mortals dressed as superheroes trolling Hollywood Boulevard for tourists’ loose change, is stunning to look at —…
Regarding the irrelevance of Untraceable: First of all, torture is so 2007, and just because this drab little thriller with a flashy love of pain imagines itself a “critique of violence” doesn’t make it any less superfluous. Second of all, untraceable? Ha! You wish. Although it’s true the villain of…
Persepolis is a small landmark in feature animation. Not because of technical innovation — though it has a handcrafted charm forgotten in the era of CGI-toon juggernauts — but because it translates an introspective, true-to-life, “adult” comic story into moving pictures. With the aid of French comic-book artist Vincent Paronnaud,…
Alex Haley’s Queen (Warner Bros.) Amazing Planet Earth (Questar) The Attic (Allumination) Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown (Warner Bros.) Breaker Morant (Image) Extras: The Complete Series (HBO) Dora the Explorer: Undercover Dora (Paramount) DragonLance: Dragons of the Autumn Twilight (Paramount) Good Luck Chuck (Lionsgate) In the Heat of the Night:…
If Diane Keaton were a comer in 2007, she’d likely be stuck in romantic comedies cooked up in movie studio test kitchens. No Godfather for her. No Annie Hall, no Shoot the Moon, no Reds. Filmmakers who now use Katherine Heigl as their go-to girl would be flummoxed by the…
Jonathan Demme, who directed Tom Hanks to an Oscar as the AIDS-afflicted lawyer in Philadelphia, might be the most well-meaning filmmaker in Hollywood. Jimmy Carter, winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human…
Like the Muppet movies, Jewish films depend largely on their locations to sell themselves. Instead of Manhattan, the Jews in Harley, Son of David take Washington, D.C., on the backs of motorcycles. In Cheese Head — My First Ghetto, it’s Kingston, Jamaica; in Cabul in Kabul, it’s Afghanistan; and in…
Family Guy Presents: Blue Harvest (Fox) As someone with no use for Seth MacFarlane’s potty-mouthed Simpsons rip, I’ll admit to choking out a few giggles during his Star Wars sendup — though, truth be told, it’s slightly less daring than Spaceballs and, sure, Porn Wars. Stunningly faithful to the 30-year-old…
Joshua (Fox) George Ratliff’s movie, a sort of satirical take on Rosemary’s Baby, came and went upon its release; seems no one got the joke about how parents (Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga, in this case) are scared shitless of their own children — especially the titular Joshua, played by…
Since promising Armageddon in the leadoff bars of Straight Outta Compton, star/producer Ice Cube has been one canny career man. In recent years he has pulled up stake in the foundering rap game and doesn’t seem to think twice about the cred damage that could come from pratfalling through PG…
First: Just register the laziness of that title. All right. The Inspiring True Story behind Great Debaters is the 1930s championship streak of East Texas’s all-black Wiley College debate team, coached by poet and teacher Melvin B. Tolson. This bit of historicity is the excuse for an educational tour of…
The All New Super Friends Hour: Season One, Volume One (Turner) American Carny: True Tales From the Circus Sideshow (Koch Vision) Cary Grant: 4-Disc Collector’s Set (Republic) Casablanca (Warner Bros.) Death Sentence (Fox) Eagle vs. Shark (Miramax) Evil Roy Slade (TMG) Golden Door (Miramax) Happy Tree Friends: Complete Season One…
Rob Reiner’s latest film is, among other things, a reflection of our persistent cultural belief that you haven’t really lived until you’ve ticked off a list of Earth’s Greatest Hits. Jack Nicholson plays Edward, a quadruple-divorced billionaire who has just been hospitalized with inoperable brain cancer. In a nice twist,…
Billy Jack (Image) The Heartbreak Kid (Universal) Indie Sex: A Revealing Look at Sex in Cinema (IFC) Jimmy and Judy (Anchor Bay) Living & Dying (HBO) Resident Evil: Extinction (Sony) Seaquest DSV: Season Two (Universal) September Dawn (Sony) Shoot ‘Em Up (New Line) Solstice (Weinstein) The Tudors: The Complete First…
Eastern Promises (Universal) David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen are becoming a Bizarro World Hitchcock/Cary Grant combo, and the world is a better (and bloodier) place for it. Chucklehead critics too smitten by Cronenberg’s “messages” dismissed this film — a vicious and brilliant exploration of the Russian mob in London —…
A great brooding thundercloud of a movie, Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood arrives as if from nowhere on a gust of critical acclaim, lowering over a landscape of barren mesas and hot, scrubby hills. Anderson’s epic, no less than his career, is both fearfully grandiose and wonderfully eccentric…
Blade Runner: The Final Cut (Warner Bros.): It’s the collector’s-set briefcase that seals the deal, a gunmetal gray case that all but shouts “Completist dork!” Also: There’s damn near every single version imaginable, plus a making-of doc almost as essential as any iteration of the movie itself. Film school in…
Hell of a thing, getting Mike Nichols to adapt the yer-kiddin’-me story of Charlie Wilson, the congressman from Lufkin, Texas, who damn near single-handedly helped the Afghans kick out the Russians in the 1980s. Says right there on page 11 of the paperback edition of George Crile’s 2003 book Charlie…
Tim Burton has taken Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Grand Guignol operetta, hemmed in the narrative, cast confessed nonsingers in the principal roles, and somehow produced something magical — the only one of the new-millennium Hollywood musicals that succeeds both musically and cinematically. Burton breathes new life into the genre…
American Pie Presents: Beta House (Universal) The Brothers Solomon (Universal) Eastern Promises (Universal) Galactica 1980: The Complete Epic Series (Universal) The Heartbreak Kid (Universal) Intimate Affairs (Universal) The Kingdom (Universal) Lost and Found: The Harry Langdon Collection (Facets) Shattered (Lions Gate) WWE: The Best of Raw 15th Anniversary (WWE)…
Once (Fox) Easily the year’s most perfect pop album — damn good movie, too, the finest “musical” of the past 20 years. The disc’s making-of refers to it as a “modern musical,” but Once is as old-fashioned as it gets: Boy (Glen Hansard) meets girl (Markéta Irglová), they fall in…
As an actor, John C. Reilly is the opposite of Mr. Cellophane. He doesn’t disappear into a role; roles disappear onto him — the unlikely porn sidekick of Boogie Nights, the inadequately adequate family man of The Hours, the cutup cowboy of A Prairie Home Companion, all stamped and imprinted…
