Jim Sheridan’s Hollywood do-over of Susanne Bier’s Danish original is a wartime soap opera served up as kitchen-sink realism, photographed by Frederick Elmes with a clear and cold albeit clichéd eye for Middle American mundanity. The Good Brother (Tobey Maguire) is off to war in Afghanistan, currently the Good War, …
Beastly spy spoof (intermixing live animals, puppets, and computer animation) focussed on a feline world-domination conspiracy and the vigilant watchdogs who oppose it. An overblown lead balloon, heavy on Bondian gadgetry and cartoon violence. With Jeff Goldblum, Elizabeth Perkins, Alexander Pollock, and the voices of Tobey Maguire, Alec Baldwin, Susan …
Lasse Hallstrom's treatment of the John Irving Bildungsroman of the same name: a Second World War period piece centered around one Homer Wells (Tobey Maguire), an abused orphan -- "twice adopted, twice returned" -- and the chosen understudy to the kindly doctor and backdoor abortionist (Michael Caine) who runs the …
A nostalgist's film noir, one more black-and-white postwar thriller, over a half-century tardy in its arrival, for the buff who has run through Crossfire, Cornered, Notorious, The Stranger, Berlin Express, and Captain Carey, U.S.A., among numerous others, and who still has a hunger. Reassuring archaisms, such as the 4:3 aspect …
Director Baz Luhrmann finds a suitable subject for the riotous excess of his directorial style in the riotous excess of the Jazz Age. By the time the onscreen parties lurch to a halt, you may feel a little buzzed yourself. Unfortunately, there's still rather a lot of movie remaining at …
Once you get past the temporary insanity of the premise — escaped killer takes mother and son prisoner in their own home and quickly becomes the lover she craves and the father he needs — the weird sincerity of the performances from Josh Brolin, Kate Winslet, and Gattlin Griffith may …
It’s tough to make a compelling character out of someone suffering from mental illness; ultimately, all you can do is look on with pity and horror. (And also sympathy, thanks to some hammer-subtle backstory.) It’s even tougher to make a national hero out of one. But when it’s 1972 and …
Twilight Zone-ish moralistic fantasy about two modern teens who are transported into the black-and-white world of a Fifties sitcom, and who succeed bit by bit, against stout resistance, in colorizing it. Let's overlook the current cultural parochialism that equates black-and-white with the dull, the drab, the stunted, the repressed, the …
A Civil War adventure set in the gray area of the Kansas-Missouri border, where there was (we learn anew) no official Confederate Army presence, only a guerrilla force of Cavalier-haired pro-South Bushwhackers to do battle against their opposite number, the abolitionist Jayhawkers. The historical time and place are inherently, which …
Writer-director Gary Ross runs through the storied career of the too-small racehorse with the too-big jockey, blind in one eye to boot. In this treatment -- a simple horse story amplified into a social history -- the nag must lug the additional weight of the aggregate Little Guy and the …
Repulsively overhyped comic-book adaptation by Sam Raimi. (How would his lighter and livelier Darkman, of 1990, have been pushed a decade later?) The hype, which naturally took no notice of the actual product and its worth, is as de rigueur as the Danny Elfman musical score and the plasticky, elasticky …
Two years later, Sam Raimi adds the inevitable second chapter to an above-average comic-book adaptation, pushing his slugging percentage even a little higher, following up the bloop single of Spider-Man with a ground-ball double just inside the foul line. The approach stays the same: a stress on character and relationship, …
Two years later, Sam Raimi adds the inevitable second chapter to an above-average comic-book adaptation, pushing his slugging percentage even a little higher, following up the bloop single of Spider-Man with a ground-ball double just inside the foul line. The approach stays the same: a stress on character and relationship, …
Slow-starting, long-lasting, highly diffuse sequel, what with a shape-shifting sandman (the true murderer of the superhero's uncle), parasitic licorice vines from outer space, an amnesiac avenger, an unprincipled newspaper photographer, and of course more rocky romance, dipping low while Spidey explores his Dark Side. All in all, a sharp comedown …
Slow-starting, long-lasting, highly diffuse sequel, what with a shape-shifting sandman (the true murderer of the superhero's uncle), parasitic licorice vines from outer space, an amnesiac avenger, an unprincipled newspaper photographer, and of course more rocky romance, dipping low while Spidey explores his Dark Side. All in all, a sharp comedown …