Casino Royale (Sony) James Bond gets a stirring shake-up in the best — yeah, Goldfinger fans, the best — film in the series’ 44-year history. Daniel Craig’s 007 has more going on above the neck and below the waist than even Sean Connery’s. He’s a genuinely compelling character — a…
Long ago there reigned a clan of Speedo-wearing militaristic psychopaths called the Spartans. They lived beneath a copper-colored sky, on a copper-colored land, amid copper-colored fields, in copper-colored homes made from copper-colored stone. Legend has it they would outline their copper-colored pecs and abs with ash to enhance their manly…
When the editorial-cartoonist-turned-amateur-sleuth Robert Graysmith published Zodiac, his sprawling, meticulously researched account of the eponymous San Francisco serial killer, he wrote that the tale was “the most frightening story I know.” It was easy to understand why. Graysmith was writing in 1985, some 16 years after the Zodiac killer’s last…
In the Heart of the Earth This Spanish period piece is set in 1888 Huelva, an Andalusian mining town run by the British-backed Rio Tinto mining company, where conflict erupts between local Spanish workers and their employers. The story is framed by a friendship between Blanca (Catalina Sandino Moreno, a…
Revenge of the Nerds: Panty Raid Edition (Fox) Revenge of the Nerds is a great movie. No, really. It’s got a bitching new-wave soundtrack and some truly inspired performances — memorable enough to wreck the careers of Robert Carradine (Lewis) and Curtis Armstrong (Booger). But mostly it’s the mix of…
A Brush With Death (New Light) Buster Crabbe Collection (St. Clair Vision) Captain Horatio Hornblower (Warner Bros.) Care Bears: Friends Forever (Lions Gate) Commissar (Kino) Confetti (Fox) Death Row (Anchor Bay) The Electric Company’s Greatest Hits & Bits (Shout) Fast Food Nation (Fox) The Full Monty: Fully Exposed Edition (Fox)…
Every film festival wants to be mentioned in the same breath as Sundance. After spending five years trying to earn the Miami International Film Festival (MIFF) the kind of global recognition it takes to attract the best in world cinema, festival director Nicole Guillemet now leaves the MIFF closer than…
In 2003 Mark and Michael Polish made Northfork, though just barely. The brothers, also responsible for art-house fave Twin Falls Idaho (about conjoined twins who fall for the same woman), lost funding for the project just before shooting began, and had to beg for money to finish their reverie about…
The Number 23 grips hold of one stupid idea and runs so far with it, in so many directions, to such little purpose, that it nearly won me over from sheer berserkoid effort. In a nutshell, this nutso movie observes what happens to a man (Jim Carrey) under the impression…
Reno 911!: Miami Norbit has nothing on Niecy Nash, who proudly parades her prosthetic ass along Miami Beach, lowering oceanside property values with each thunderous step. The joke here is that the snooty pastel metropolis needs to be taken down a few rungs by Nash and her law enforcement crew…
In December 2002, ABC’s 20/20 ran a story on Eric O’Neill, an undercover surveillance specialist for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The piece was titled “Spy Catcher,” because it was O’Neill who, at a mere 27 years old, helped bring down Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent who, for more than…
You remember Andrew Ridgeley, don’t you? He was the other guy in Wham!, the one who found himself stranded in 1986, after George Michael had faith enough in his own talents to break up the act. Ridgeley went on to record one solo record, before CBS Records decided, yeah, no…
Close to Home With at least the virtue of novelty on its side, Vidi Bilu and Dalia Hager’s debut outing as writer-directors may be the first feature to tackle the claustrophobic world of Israeli women soldiers who work out their mandatory military service patrolling the streets and buses of Jerusalem,…
Marie Antoinette (Sony) Sofia Coppola’s third feature grabs you by your frilly lapels from the jump, with Gang of Four’s “Natural’s Not in It” showering guitar chords all over the credits as Kirsten Dunst nods to the audience, as if to say, Hang tight — this thing’s gonna be a…
Bicycle Thieves: The Criterion Collection (Criterion) The Boy From Lebanon (Picture This) The Butcher Boy (Warner Bros.) The Cave of the Yellow Dog (Tartan) The Departed (Warner Bros.) Devil’s Den (Starz) F**K (ThinkFilm) Green for Danger: The Criterion Collection (Criterion) The Hills: The Complete First Season (Paramount) Hustle: Complete Season…
What could be scarier than yet another PG-13 creepfest serving up pasty, staggering ghouls with stringy hair? Why, the same PG-13 creepfest set against the high-tension backdrop of … sunflower farming! Sorry, fear fans, if you were expecting a Ferry-Morse catalogue of floral fright from The Messengers, the latest Hollywood…
Epic Movie The speeds of sound and light remain constants, but the speed of crap accelerates like a rocket luge on Crisco Mountain. Seriously, the daddy of the spoof-movie genre, 1980’s Airplane!, stocked its pop culture arsenal with references to 1957’s Zero Hour, 1970’s Airport, and 1975’s Jaws. By contrast,…
The Science of Sleep (Warner Bros.) Feature films are to video directors what sitcoms are to stand-up comedians, and for every David Fincher and Seinfeld, there are dozens of artists who should have stayed in the field they know best. Michel Gondry, who made his name directing fantastic videos for…
Alfred Hitchcock: The Early Years of the Master of Suspense (Lions Gate) All Quiet on the Western Front (Universal) Anything but Love: Volume One (Fox) Arabian Nights (Universal) Best Picture: Academy Award Winners Collection (Paramount) Boynton Beach Club (Sony) Charmed: The Complete Seventh Season (Paramount) Cinderella III: A Twist in…
Though I’m sure it’s purely coincidental, the decision to release the Diane Keaton-Mandy Moore rom-com Because I Said So with the scent of this year’s Sundance Film Festival still fresh in the air provides us with an excellent opportunity to review the wayward career of the movie’s director, Michael Lehmann…
What, have we already exhausted the world’s reserves of recyclable Seventies schlock? Apparently not — is that a poster in the megaplex lobby for the goddamn Hills Have Eyes 2? — but nobody told music-vid whiz Dave Meyers, who sets his way-back machine for dimly remembered 1986 and fetches a…
PARK CITY, Utah — We all know about the cathartic power of blues music, but until the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, who knew that it could serve as a cure-all for everything from nymphomania to childhood sexual abuse? In Hustle & Flow director Craig Brewer’s Black Snake Moan, whose out-of-competition…
