Directorial debut of Stephen Gaghan, "Oscar-winning" screenwriter of Traffic. An unmoored, becalmed suspense film about a missing-person case on a college campus. Every now and then he does a scene, or a shot, in blue or gold (more often blue), and every now and then he jiggles the camera -- …
With a new director (Christopher Nolan) and a new star (Christian Bale), the fifth entry in the Batman series, true to its title, returns to square one: how and why Bruce Wayne came to be Batman; the psychological root of his fixation on flying mammals; the part this played in …
For all the posh trappings of Ye Olde Haunted House and a Guillermo del Toro script, the horror is hokum. Guy Pearce is too busy fixing up the mansion to notice that his daughter (Bailee Madison), traumatized by his divorce, is losing her mind. She is also terrorized by tiny, …
The filmmaking team of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, after the mainstream excursion of The Nanny Diaries, return to the alternative cinema — home of their American Splendor — with a vengeance: a kooky comedy about a transvestite aspiring writer (creepmousy Paul Dano) taken under wing by an aging …
Second apolitical comedy in the same election year to deal with the wing-spreading of the President's only child, this girl heading west to college, in the footsteps of Chelsea Clinton, while her father campaigns for a second term. The film had the bad fortune to be beaten into the marketplace …
It gives, first of all, a hefty central role to the deserving and appreciative but not effusive Cate Blanchett -- that of a widowed backwater Georgia fortune-teller ("I don't call myself that") with three young boys -- and it gives vivid and well-differentiated surrounding roles to the varyingly worthy Giovanni …
Minor mishap from the maker of Swingers. Doug Liman's underfunded and overrated first film at least had a pretense of social observation within a restricted radius of reality, though even there he showed signs of excessive awareness of the audience and his effect on it. Observation tended to be outbalanced …
A film about the perils of success. Watch Al Pacino do his damnedest to shed his legacy (and goof on his beloved Shakespeare while he’s at it). Watch Adam Sandler take the lash to himself for getting rich via crass hackwork. Watch them both pretend that what they really want …
A demographically diverse trio of women (Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, Katie Holmes) are of undivided mind about the wisdom and fun of siphoning off wrinkled old bills, marked for shredding, from the Kansas City Federal Reserve. The director, Callie Khouri, makes a unanimous fourth. A caper comedy heedless of consequences, …
The fundamental idea -- a thriller tethered for almost its total running time to a public telephone, squarely in the telescopic sights of a taunting sniper -- had reportedly been around long enough for scriptwriter Larry Cohen (subsequently the writer-director of such disreputable entertainments as It's Alive and The Private …
Thanksgiving-from-Hell comedy wherein a rebellious daughter, living in a bad neighborhood in the big city, tries to prepare her first holiday meal for her barely functional family from the suburbs. Small but broad, cheap but commercial, with a movie-stealing performance by Sean Hayes as the prissy upstairs neighbor in possession …
I was working the night watch out of North Park’s long-defunct Citizen’s Video when The Secret first revealed itself to me. My curiosity was piqued, but it took months before I finally got it. Not “got it” in the sense of understanding. (What do you take me for?) Rather, “got …
Satire with teeth, discolored though they may be. There is nothing exceptional cinematically about the directing debut of Jason Reitman, son of the mainstream comedy director Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters, Twins, Kindergarten Cop, and the like), but from the opening credits -- the witty cigarette-pack graphic motif, Tex Williams's C&W; oldie, …
Somewhat infuriating ode to (as opposed to exploration of) the relationship between artistic genius and insanity. Katie Holmes is Carla; she writes poems about the sun. Luke Kirby is Marco; he writes poems about the moon. They're...troubled. They both have loving parents who want to help them, but what does …