Est. 1998
Oh man! This is so bad! This film is so badly written and directed that it would suck even if it was a TV movie. The only reason it was made is because it’s the first film of Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew Christopher. It’s about a con man who accidentally kills his father/partner during a scam and then goes to work for his uncle Lou,…
I love doing these reviews, but they don’t pay the bills. In fact, I still have to pay to see most movies, so I don’t bother seeing movies that are obviously not worth my time. As for what I do see, it can come down to a bunch of factors: an interesting synopsis, a cool looking trailer, a filmmaker whose work I admire, actors I’m…
One of the things I’m proud of as a film critic is that I’m able to enjoy all kinds of movies. I don’t mean that I’m too easily please; it’s just that I can appreciate the virtues of certain big blockbusters like I do for the classy arthouse pics. Hence, I don’t take part in the near-universal vendetta of reviewers against SNL alumn Adam Sandler….
“I totally phoned in that Dennis Quaid movie!” So said Topher Grace in Ocean’s Twelve, but don’t take him seriously. I’ve yet to see the guy be less than charming and hilarious on screen. Even in forgettable crap like Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!, he manages to be entertaining and likable. Here he doesn’t have to worry about being the only bright spot in…
I was born in 1980. As a kid, I watched a lot of cartoons, I played video games (Atari, Nintendo, and eventually Super NES), I collected comic books, and I was into action movies something fierce. As I grew older, I also became a huge fan of music and of, well, girls. The above is not a self-indulgent intro but a way of telling you…
Where the hell has “Weird Al” Yankovic been? Besides an offhand reference in last year’s “Ghost World”, I haven’t heard of him since he released the amusingly titled album “Running with Scissors” back in 1999. I always had a special fondness for Yankovic’ brand of silliness, whether it be on record, on stage, in his always inspired music videos or on his sadly short-lived subversive…
This Quebec-made gangster movie is based on the true story of “Machine Gun Molly”, a young woman born on the wrong side of the Main who made headlines in the 1960s during a spree of bank robberies. While not quite glorifying the notorious criminal, the film does attempt to make us understand that Monique Sparvieri’s choices were limited. For this uneducated girl to overcome poverty,…
When perverted dermatologist Larry (Clive Owen) asks angelic stripper Alice (Natalie Portman) what she thinks of photograph Anna (Julia Roberts)’s pictures, she answers that “it’s a lie”, a “bunch of sad strangers photographed beautifully” so the art gallery crowd can feel better about it. The implication, it seems, is that “Closer” won’t go for that lie, that it will show sad people without making them…
This is one of the single most masterful pictures ever made. I had the privilege of first seeing it as it was meant to be watched, i.e. in a movie theater in a grandiose, newly restored 70mm Vistavision print when the film was re-released in 1996. I had never been so stirred by a movie, and have rarely been since to that level. “Vertigo” is…
A remake of “The Karate Kid”? Produced by Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith and starring their son? Sounds like a pointless, ego-driven, “let’s cash in on the nostalgia factor while also giving our boy the chance to be the lead in a movie” venture, right? Maybe, but after having seen it, I can assure you that whatever the producers’ intentions were, the end result is…