Does Steve Martin have multiple personality disorder — or is he just brilliantly in tune with some things and wildly out of touch with others? Shopgirl, the movie based on Martin’s novella of the same name, is one of the most schizoid films in recent memory. It opens with crystalline…
When we first see the protagonist of North Country, a working-class heroine portrayed by a deglamorized Charlize Theron, she’s sporting a black eye and a slight limp, the results of an encounter with her abusive husband. We soon learn that Josey Aimes is only now beginning to take her lumps…
Beavis and Butt-head: The Mike Judge Collection, Volume One (Paramount) This three-disc, 40-episode volume chronicling Beavis and Butt-head’s early years will come as a relief to anyone who was stuck in a teenage wasteland when the MTV series first hit the air; turns out, we weren’t just stoned — this…
Bang Rajan (Hart Sharp) Big Fish: Special Edition (Columbia/Tristar) Blue Collar TV: Season 1, Volume 1 (Warner Bros.) Burn (Columbia/Tristar) Christmas With the Kranks (Sony) Cronicas (UMVD) Edward Scissorhands: Anniversary Edition (Fox) 50 Cent: Refuse to Die (New Line) Jumanji: Deluxe Edition (Columbia/Tristar) La Dolce Vita: Deluxe Collector’s Edition (Koch…
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (Lucasfilm Ltd.) The final installment of the Star Wars saga actually plays better at home: You can watch it, then pop in the original trilogy and chart the evolution of Anakin, and have it all actually make sense. Though it’s still a…
American Chopper: Third Season (Columbia/Tristar) Attack Pack (Commando, Predator, and Kiss of the Dragon) (Fox) Bill Maher: I’m Swiss (Image Ent.) The Brady Bunch: Four-Season Pack (Paramount) Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam (Warner Bros.) Disney Princess: A Christmas of Enchantment (Disney) Duran Duran: Live From London (Universal Music) Fame:…
Given the more than 100 films screening at this year’s Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, the quality is bound to be uneven. So it’s pleasing to come across a find like Aurora Borealis, a small, unassuming film without any grand ambitions. The film unfolds over a few snowy months in…
The Weather Man, starring Nicolas Cage as a disappointment of a son and a failure of a father, was screened for critics in the spring. But its April release was pushed to October, ostensibly to allow for the off chance that Cage or Michael Caine (as Cage’s father) might be…
If Jarhead, director Sam Mendes and writer William Broyles, Jr.’s adaptation of Anthony Swofford’s 2003 Gulf War memoir, seems at all familiar — like, say, a DJ’s mashup of Full Metal Jacket and Three Kings — there’s good reason for it. Swofford, twenty years old during Operation Desert Storm in…
Titanic: Special Collector’s Edition (Paramount Home Video) Loved and loathed in equal measure, Titanic nonetheless is among the few modern-day movies deserving of lavish treatment; this boxed set, three discs with three hours of new stuff, feels almost as big a production as the feature itself. Writer-director James Cameron, never…
ABBA: The Movie (Universal) AC/DC: And Then There Was Rock (Chrome Dreams) Alias: The Complete Fourth Season (Buena Vista) Audioslave: Live in Cuba (Sony) The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Wellspring) Bewitched (Columbia/Tristar) The Day of the Triffids (Pro-Active) Dominion: A Prequel to the Exorcist (Warner) Face (Image) Herbie: Fully…
When one watches Where the Truth Lies, a film noir about a young celebrity journalist’s obsession with a comedy duo from the Fifties, a single question arises again and again: Why? Why have the immense talents of Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth, who are excellent in this movie, been squandered…
Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s mandate from the Jim Henson Company was to take four million dollars and create something in a similar vein to The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, movies that bombed on initial release but have steadily grown in popularity over the years. Thanks to a lack of…
Talk about striking while the iron is hot: It’s been only a year since Saw became an instant cult hit, as well as a topic of debate among horror fans. Was it an innovative new classic, or did the occasionally lackluster acting and ludicrous final twist doom it to also-ran…
DreamWorks is so anxious to have you believe in its latest family movie that the words “Inspired by a True Story” are actually part of the title. Yep, Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story is the proper name, and publicists have been well-coached to say and write out the whole…
The Adventures of Superman: The Complete First Season (Warner Bros.) American Movie Musicals Collection (Columbia/Tristar) Batman Begins (Warner Bros.) Bruce Lee: Ultimate Collection (Fox) The Care Bears: Big Wish Movie (Lions Gate) The Coen Brothers Collection (Universal) CSI New York: The Complete First Season (Paramount) Dark Shadows: The Complete Revival…
Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989-1997 (Warner Home Video) There’s good reason to be skeptical of an eight-disc Batman set that forces you to buy the campy Joel Schumacher movies (Batman Forever, its title a veiled threat, and Batman & Robin) when all you need are the dark Tim Burton…
This fall, the roll call of gigantic ghosts inhabiting cinematic biographies continues unabated, with Joaquin Phoenix as a shrunken Johnny Cash in Ring of Fire, David Strathairn as an inscrutable Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the ambitiously manipulative Truman Capote in,…
Some films leave an indelible impression on the heart and mind. Innocent Voices is one of those films. Set in El Salvador in the early Eighties, during that country’s protracted civil unrest, the movie depicts the nightmare of warfare through the eyes of an eleven-year-old boy. The fact it’s a…
Sex is on everybody’s mind in this breezy, insouciant French film from writer/directors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau. A comedy — not a farce, thank heavens — about confused identities, misunderstandings, hidden truths, and sexual shenanigans, it’s well acted by an unusually likable cast. Béatrix (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi), her husband Marc…
Serenity, Joss Whedon’s big-screen spinoff of the 2002 TV show Firefly, which didn’t even last a dozen episodes, is already a cult phenom well before its opening. The show’s DVD boxed set lines the shelf of every fanboy who dreamed of gunslinging in space alongside preachers and prostitutes, and already…
Director Curtis Hanson, a journeyman only recently bestowed the title of Great Director, has already made his horror movie (1973’s The Arousers), his kiddie action comedy (1980’s The Little Dragons), his teen sex romp (1983’s Losin’ It ), his handful of Hitchcock riffs (1987’s The Bedroom Window, 1990’s Bad Influence,…
