Pan’s Labyrinth (New Line) Guillermo Del Toro has made a career of mixing slam-bang special effects (Hellboy, Blade II) with creepy atmospheres (Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone). But with Pan’s Labyrinth, he’s used his entire palette for what will likely be remembered as his masterpiece. Mixing Franco’s Spain with fairy tales,…
Coming out of Shrek the Third, I asked the two smart preteen girls I had in tow what they had liked about the picture. Projectile vomiting and multiple farts, they said promptly, best Shrek ever. Ordinarily I’m not big on poop and flatulence, but in this instance I sympathized —…
Who knows how many bottles of Francis Ford Coppola’s Directors’ Cut Pinot Noir it would take to forget that the virtuoso who made the Godfather saga was also responsible for the sentimental embarrassment known as Jack, starring Robin Williams at his self-indulgent, man-childish worst? Thankfully, though, Coppola’s days of driving…
Four years after “Mission Accomplished,” 28 Weeks Later reminds us that the mission, whatever the hell it was to begin with, is now officially, apocalyptically fucked. The story thus far: Seven months have gone by since the Rage virus passed from chimp fang to British bloodstream in an animal rights…
War is hell, says Home of the Brave, and if you’re Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, so is acting. Fiddy gets a leg up from being typecast as Jamal Atkins, one of four demoralized veterans of Operation Enduring Fuckup, home from Iraq to a world of pain. How to handle back…
To Catch a Thief: Special Collector’s Edition (Paramount) Starring Cary Grant as a cat burglar and Grace Kelly as a hot-to-trot heiress, this is easily one of Alfred Hitchcock’s slightest films, especially coming on the heels of Rear Window; indeed, its idyllic setting on the French Riviera suggests it was…
Because I Said So! (Universal) Breaking and Entering (Weinstein) The Bridge on the River Kwai: Collector’s Edition (Sony) Cagney & Lacey: The True Beginning (MGM) The Caine Mutiny: Collector’s Edition (Sony) Catch & Release (Sony) Deliver Us From Evil (Lionsgate) Dirty Dancing: Twentieth Anniversary (Lionsgate) Donnie Brasco: Extended Cut (Sony)…
What is it with the third installments in superhero film franchises? For whatever reason — and, oh, let’s just call it the lack of fresh ideas commingled with the love of money — they always strike out swinging their third time up to bat. It happened with Superman, when Richard…
Orchestrated by evildoers from hostile quarters of the global village, a nuclear holocaust looms over Los Angeles. This ought to ease traffic, but the FBI, headed by an extremely excitable Julianne Moore, is concerned enough to forcibly recruit the services of a two-bit Vegas magician and pre-Cog (a freshly buffed…
Little Children (New Line) In the eyes of Hollywood, our American suburbs are so filled with perversion and treachery that it seems the government ought to crack down on something. Until then, we can count on movies like Little Children to keep us informed. Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson are…
Alpha Dog (Universal) An Officer and a Gentleman: Special Collector’s Edition (Paramount) The Best of the Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet (Shout) Beverly Hills 90210: The Second Season (Paramount) Clint Eastwood: Western Icon Collection (Universal) A Collection of 2006 Academy Award Nominated Short Films (Magnolia) Fletch: The Jane Doe Edition…
Think pink? Try orange. In a subtle attempt to remind audiences of the county’s most infamous and contemptible act of homophobia, organizers of this year’s Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival have appropriated the state’s official fruit — in the sweet and sunny form of an orange slice — for…
How best describe to experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger? Let’s leave that to the man himself. In this rose-tinted career recapper by Elio Gelmini, Anger declares himself a maverick, a pioneer, an idealist, a romantic. Just don’t call him a cynic. Or a conformist. Fair enough. The Fireworks dealer also recalls…
If Shakespeare had attempted to write Romeo & Juliet as a gay love story set in today’s Middle East, he couldn’t have written a more tragic romance than this plea for peace from Yossi and Jagger and Walk on Water director Eytan Fox and his writing (and life) partner Gal…
It’s easy to lose yourself in the jungle island that serves as a home for grumpy and finicky botanist Chen (Ling Dong Fu) and Cheng An (Xiao Ran Li), the daughter who tends to his every need. It’s a lush and exotic refuge from an intolerant and unforgiving society. No…
No doubt Oscar Wilde would have approved of director Duncan Roy relocating the setting of his Victorian-era Faustian exploration of youth, vanity, lust, and power to modern-day New York City. His superficial social-climbing stud — who now employs a multiscreen art installation, rather than a portrait, to prevent his beauty…
Planet Earth (BBC/Warner Bros.) Roll over, Marlin Perkins, and tell Jacques Cousteau the news: There’s never been another nature series like this. You will spend forever glued to this five-disc collection, finding among such holy-shit discoveries a herd of never-before-photographed camels who live in the frozen wastelands, great whites dining…
Al Franken: God Spoke (Docurama) Code Name: The Cleaner (New Line) Columbo: Mystery Murder Collection 1989 (Universal) Déjà Vu (Buena Vista) The Documentaries of Louis Malle (Criterion) The Drew Carey Show: The Complete First Season (Warner Bros.) Flipper: Season One (MGM) .45 (Velocity) Ironside: Season 1 (Shout! Factory) Jean Renoir:…
Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show (Sony) The greatest boxed set ever — not so much for the made-up irritainment as for the real thing, which this collection serves up by the ton. There are 23 brilliant episodes of the HBO show here, but they pale in…
Brute Force: The Criterion Collection (Criterion) Cutie Honey: The Movie (Bandai) Double Happiness (Image) Forgiving Dr. Mengele (First Run) Freedom Writers (Paramount) George Lopez: The Complete 1st and 2nd Seasons (Warner Bros.) Happy Days: The Second Season (Paramount) The History Boys (Fox) The Image (Warner Bros.) La Haine: The Criterion…
For all the huzzahs deservedly heaped upon the 2004 film Shaun of the Dead, in which it took a good long while to discern the living from the walking deceased, the zombie-flick spoof was little more than an extended sketch taken, oh, nineteen minutes beyond its breaking point. But the…
This week’s generically titled studio suspense thriller, Fracture, has the good sense to begin where last week’s generically titled studio suspense thriller, Perfect Stranger, ended — with the solution to that tedious riddle: Whodunit? The answer this time is Anthony Hopkins as Ted Crawford, an aeronautical engineer whose pockets of…
