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(10/10/06 6:00am)
Martin Scorsese has crafted brilliant, galvanizing movies about
everything from the Dalai Lama to upper-crust 19th century
Manhattanites, but his unparalleled skill for creating vivid,
extremely violent tales of organized crime has painted him into a
corner of sorts. His new crime drama ""The Departed"" is his most
vital, exhilarating work since ""GoodFellas."" To call it the best
movie of the year would be faint praise—""The Departed"" is one of
Scorsese's greatest films and, accordingly, one of the best films
ever made.
(09/10/06 6:00am)
\Factotum"" is defined as a man who performs many jobs, which
is, in fact, what Henry Chinaski does. As portrayed by Matt Dillon
in a crafty performance, Chinaski—the alter ego of author Charles
Bukowski—drifts through life perpetually seeking his next drink
and, as constantly hitting the sauce requires quite a bit of cash,
his next temporary stint of employment.
(09/07/06 6:00am)
It's been said numerous times before, but the most frustrating
cinematic failures are those that display spurts of brilliance and
promise before devolving into complete crap. OutKast's new musical
""Idlewild"" is one such waste of potential, time and talent.
(09/04/06 6:00am)
This generation doesn't have a definitive comedy troupe. Our
grandparents had the Marx Brothers and our parents had Monty
Python, but we've got hardly any official troupes to call our own.
The group that comes the closest is Broken Lizard, who have already
crafted one genuine cult classic (""Super Troopers""), but their
subsequent efforts have been less than stellar (the spotty ""Club
Dread"" and, although it doesn't technically count as a Broken
Lizard movie, the abominable ""Dukes of Hazzard""). Their new
movie, ""Beerfest,"" is about as sophomoric as immature comedy
comes, but it is a sloppy, often hilarious return to form.
(05/01/06 6:00am)
The brainless arguments against writer-director Paul Greengrass'
stunning new docudrama United 93,\ the first major Hollywood film
to depict the events of Sept. 11, 2001, are reminiscent of an
episode of ""South Park."" The episode dealt with Jared the Subway
spokesman inadvertently making the town think he had AIDS, and once
the problem was solved, Stan and Kyle discovered that the touchy
issue was dated enough to be fair game for poking fun. Trey Parker
and Matt Stone got a lot of mileage out of ridiculing the
assumption that sensitive subjects cannot be tackled by art for an
unwritten but requisite number of years. Some rigorously
politically correct loudmouths, nearly all of whom have not
actually seen the film, have assailed ""United 93"" for being an
exploitative capitalist venture that is coming out way too soon.
This cynical criticism is as ignorant as it is frustrating and
laughable, as it not only presupposes that art is not capable of
being relevant or essential, but implies that it should not
be.
(04/25/06 6:00am)
Silent Hill,\ the latest video game film adaptation, certainly
has more ambition than the usual shoot-em-up knockoff like
""Doom."" With ""Brotherhood of the Wolf"" director Christophe Gans
and ""Pulp Fiction"" co-scribe Roger Avary, ""Silent Hill"" is
unique in that it has respectable talent behind it. But even if it
delivers on the technical level, ""Silent Hill"" as a whole is a
long, tedious mess that will win only the admiration of diehard
players of the game.
(04/24/06 6:00am)
Snap, Crackle, Pudas!
(04/17/06 6:00am)
Snap, Crackle, Pudas!
(04/12/06 6:00am)
Although we tend to only remember movies that are phenomenal or
terrible, the great majority of films in theaters at any given time
are simply marginal. Right now, we are still in the midst of the
post-Oscar slump, so there is an inordinate amount of
bottom-denominator crap like The Shaggy Dog\ and ""The
Benchwarmers"" clogging up the multiplex, but as the summer nears,
we should be seeing more of a balance in quality. In other words,
for every great film in theaters, there will be half a dozen
exceedingly average movies there to accompany it.
(04/10/06 6:00am)
Snap, Crackle, Pudas!
(04/05/06 6:00am)
You go to the movies, and your review must admit that it was you
who was there, and it's you who's writing the review, and it's you
who has the feelings. You shouldn't try and be a ventriloquist and
say things that you think the readers want to hear, things that you
think you should say or stay away from things if you think you
shouldn't say them. You have to actually deal with the immediate
experience that you had.\
(04/05/06 6:00am)
Q: Are you introducing any films at
the festival this year?
(04/04/06 6:00am)
Remember that movie that was only famous for its beaver shot but
not for actually being a good movie? Yeah, let's make another one
of those.\ Well put, David Spade, well put. Spade was referring to
the baffling decision to make a sequel to 1992's ""Basic
Instinct,"" a trashy thriller scripted by notoriously-overpaid
sleaze peddler Joe Eszterhas (""Showgirls,"" ""Jade"") and directed
by Paul Verhoeven (""Starship Troopers,"" ""RoboCop,"" ""Total
Recall"").
(04/03/06 6:00am)
Snap, Crackle, Pudas!
(03/27/06 6:00am)
Back when I was a freshman, I made the regrettable mistake of
ripping on Dirty Dancing\ ad nauseam whenever I saw it gracing the
shelves of a female acquaintance's movie collection. This was
before I realized that nearly every girl I know not only owns but
cherishes her copy of that Patrick Swayze-Jennifer Grey dance hit,
and cracking wise about it is a rather unwise idea.
(03/22/06 6:00am)
Wes Craven's original The Hills Have Eyes,\ which was itself
practically a remake of his own 1972 jolter ""Last House on the
Left,"" was an ultra low-budget, exploitative look at man's
inherent capacity for violence. Both films, which were also
influenced by Ingmar Bergman's ""The Virgin Spring,"" had likeable,
innocent Americans being tortured and senselessly killed by
antagonists representing evil in its purest form so that other
likeable, innocent Americans could guiltlessly embrace their
capability for violence and slay those godless sons-of-bitches.
(03/21/06 6:00am)
Snap, Crackle, Pudas!When it comes to trenchant political and
social satire, there is no better current source than South Park,\
which is far and away my favorite television show. Since its humble
beginnings 10 years ago, Trey Parker and Matt Stone's crudely
animated show has assaulted everything from easy targets (David
Caruso, Barbara Streisand) to the fattest of sacred cows (the
Catholic faith), encountering controversy and debate with every
jest. But last week, Comedy Central finally caved in to outside
pressure and refused to air a repeat of one of the show's funniest
episodes: a hysterical lampoon of the Church of Scientology, with a
special emphasis on mocking Tom Cruise, entitled ""Trapped in the
Closet.""This has been quite a week for ""South Park,"" as the
backlash over the episode—which originally aired back in
November—resulted in the departure of avowed Scientologist Isaac
Hayes, who was previously the voice of Chef. Cruise already had the
episode banned in the UK, where libel laws are markedly stricter.
Even though his anonymous spokespeople denied he exerted his
influence to have last Wednesday's repeat pulled, he most likely
did. In fact, Cruise supposedly threatened to yank advertisements
for ""Mission: Impossible 3"" if the episode aired again, which
would have caused substantial problems for Paramount and Comedy
Central's parent company Viacom. Now I know that everybody hates
Cruise after his couch-jumping escapades and passionately
boneheaded comments about postpartum depression (""I know the
history of psychiatry, Matt!""), but this is something different
entirely. Cruise has now suppressed freedom of speech, albeit
legally (corporate prior restraint, as disgusting as it is, is not
against the law), and that goes way behind his history of being an
incorrigible poor sport. If you support freedom of speech under the
First Amendment, you have to be willing to defend and tolerate the
rights of others to speak out and criticize, even if their words
are aimed squarely at you. This same old problem has come up time
and time again, from John Adams to Jerry Falwell, and Cruise's
bullying brand of censorship is equally unacceptable. Considering
that Hayes picked last week to quit the show, Scientologists must
be scared of the impact the episode has and will continue to have.
Even though secretive details of the Scientologist mythology have
been revealed in various newspapers for a few years, ""Trapped in
the Closet"" may actually inform more people than before about
their wacky beliefs. In fact, the Scientologist story of evil lord
Xenu trapping spiritual Thetans in human bodies provided the most
hilarious material for ""Trapped in the Closet"" (Parker and Stone
memorably placed a large subtitle, ""This is what Scientologists
actually believe"" over the sequence); this scene was perhaps even
funnier than each appearance from a gun-toting, commentating R.
Kelly.
(03/21/06 6:00am)
Usually when a widely respected actor or actress makes a
directorial debut, their film owes a distinctive debt to the work
of another director. Robert De Niro's fantastic A Bronx Tale\ had
all the hallmarks of a sweeping Scorsese mobster epic, and before
he astonished everyone with ""Good Night, and Good Luck,"" George
Clooney helmed a decent but somewhat timid adaptation of Chuck
Barris' so-called autobiography, ""Confessions of a Dangerous
Mind,"" that had more than just a whiff of Soderbergh slickness.
Although Tommy Lee Jones' debut, a modern-day Western called ""The
Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada,"" has drawn numerous
references to legendary director Sam Peckinpah, it is a well-acted
but ultimately unremarkable morality tale. In fact, ""Three
Burials"" is technically not Jones' debut—he previously helmed a
TNT film called ""The Good Old Boys""—but it is his first film to
be theatrically released to widespread acclaim. Jones stars as Pete
Perkins, a taciturn cowboy whose beloved friend Melquiades (Julio
Cedillo) is killed in a moronic accident by newbie border patrolman
Mike Norton (Barry Pepper). After he discovers the authorities plan
on ignoring the incident, Perkins concocts a plan to honor
Melquiades that involves digging him up, kidnapping Norton and
heading south of the border to bury him in his hometown. Other
supporting characters hover around the proceedings, and through a
handful of flashbacks, we become privy to the intimate
relationships and hidden ironies created by them. We meet some of
the town's residents, including Norton's pretty young wife (January
Jones, Stifler's object of affection in ""American Wedding""), the
impotent sheriff (Dwight Yoakum) and an amorous diner waitress
(Melissa Leo) who's more bored than horny. With a complex script by
Guillermo Arriaga (who previously wrote two of the past decade's
best movies, ""21 Grams"" and ""Amores Perros""), the subtleties
and nuances of these criss-crossing lives enhance the central
events of the film. ""Three Burials"" is most involving when Jones
lingers on the tedium of the small Texas town everyone has to live
in, observing friendships and sexual relationships that blossom
almost solely out of necessity. These characters spend a lot of
time smoking cigarettes and watching people come and go in a town
which is, like a certain Yoakum song's refrain, one thousand miles
from nowhere. The long hike Perkins and Norton take is, on the
other hand, not as engaging. It has its inspired moments, most
notably a visit with a wizened old man (The Band's drummer Levon
Helm) who helps them out and then makes a startlingly poignant
request. But the journey, which is always visually stunning, has a
tendency to lag on its way to an obvious and predictable
conclusion. To Arriaga and Jones' credit, the ending is much more
restrained than it could have been, but it is still abrupt and
disappointingly anticlimactic. Also, the film often contradicts its
efforts to show complexity by portraying all of the Mexicans as
good-hearted saints and nearly all of the Caucasians as petty,
cruel, dismissive and sexually dysfunctional. This isn't to say
that Jones descends into ""Crash""-style hyperbole, but as an
allegorical piece of social commentary, ""Three Burials""
occasionally feels smug. When it clicks, ""Three Burials"" is
thoughtful and interesting, but despite a plethora of intriguing
moments and scenes, the film runs out of steam. It's a prestigious
film that won Best Actor and Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film
Festival and will appeal to some while boring others. However,
Jones coaxes uniformly proficient performances from his cast and
shows enough genuine promise behind the camera to make one hope he
directs another film.
(03/06/06 6:00am)
Snap, Crackle, Pudas!As of today, the movie awards season is
officially over. Most of the awards shows are congratulatory
affairs that encourage you to see the highest-touted films of the
year, which are oftentimes under-seen by the general populace. It's
kind of ironic how similarly little press coverage is given to the
various awards ceremonies for bad movies, such as the Golden
Raspberry Awards and Stinker Bad Movie Awards, which disparage some
films that, unfortunately, have made significantly more money than
the Oscar nominees for Best Picture.
(03/06/06 6:00am)
A great concert film is a communal celebration that should leave
you exhilarated, invigorated and pissed off that you couldn't be
there to witness it first-hand. It takes a visionary director to
create and sustain a brisk vibe to appeal to a mass audience of
varying tastes. Brilliant Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind\
director Michel Gondry has proven he is up to the task with ""Dave
Chappelle's Block Party,"" a lively chronicle of a free Brooklyn
bash Chappelle held in September 2004.