Cheap-trick chiller from a Stephen King book. A Mississippi hick, an amusing John Turturro, shows up at the doorstep of a Stephen King-like popular author (Johnny Depp, playing a lot to the camera) to accuse him of plagiarism: "Ye-oo stowl mah stow-ry." Plagiarism as a subject might have been as …
Jennifer Tilly, playing herself, namely a chocolate-munching has-been ("How come I don't get any good roles anymore?"), gets impregnated by turkey-baster with the ejaculate of a demonic doll: "No wonder her career is in trouble." Her trust has been sorely misplaced, her good nature brutally abused. With Hannah Spearritt, Redman, …
A dog gone astray in an American family adventure film generally portends a running time consumed by the pup’s struggle to make its way back home. Not Sergeant Pepper! He’s thrilled to be rid of the two adult children of his dearly departed master, who bequeathed a fortune to his …
Ill-conceived American remake, under British director Peter Chelsom, of the 1996 Japanese film (not the 1937 Astaire-Rogers film), the original of which was a success as much artistically as commercially. The social stigma, for starters, which we learned was attached to ballroom dancing in the regimented Land of the Rising …
Subaqueous computer animation; or, Finding Nemo's Sunken Treasure. Not only is the plasticky animation done by computer, but also the plotting, scripting, casting, everything. We have here, plugged in as variables in the formula, hip-hop fish (voice, and lips, of Will Smith), Mafia sharks (voice and facial mole of Robert …
British takeoff, or send-up as you prefer, of George Romero's imaginative, morbidly witty zombie film, Dawn of the Dead. All of the imagination in this one has gone into the humor and none into the horror. Put more simply, all of it has gone into Shaun (and his associates) and …
British takeoff, or send-up as you prefer, of George Romero's imaginative, morbidly witty zombie film, Dawn of the Dead. All of the imagination in this one has gone into the humor and none into the horror. Put more simply, all of it has gone into Shaun (and his associates) and …
From Spike Lee, two movies in one, the first concerned with a whistle-blower who exposes insider trading, among other malpractices, at a major pharmaceutical company (experimenting on an anti-AIDS pill, for added combustibility), and the second concerned with an interactive sperm donor for a virtual Rainbow Coalition of maternalistic lesbians …
Maurizio Benazzo's and Nick Day's scattered coverage of the immense Kumbh Mela, an every-twelve-years religious fesitval at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, a sacred pilgrimage undertaken by tens of millions, a sort of outsized state fair of Eastern holy men (and women) and their disciples, a veritable …
Another dose of foam-rubber animation, rapacious capitalism, mainstream hipness, and coy vulgarity ("It looks like we're up Chocolate Creek without a popsicle stick"). Viewers of the forerunner will know what they are in for, and will have only themselves to blame. One new character, Puss 'n Boots, is well drawn …
Another dose of foam-rubber animation, rapacious capitalism, mainstream hipness, and coy vulgarity ("It looks like we're up Chocolate Creek without a popsicle stick"). Viewers of the forerunner will know what they are in for, and will have only themselves to blame. One new character, Puss 'n Boots, is well drawn …
The bare outline would look like a hundred other buddy comedies: two old friends from college, an ex-soap opera actor and a would-be novelist, take off for an ostensible round of golfing and wine-tasting a week before the former's wedding. They present a classic study in contrasts: the slob and …
Droning instruction in politics, economics, and sociology from the liberal slant of John Sayles. (The liberalism is irreproachable: the cast is listed alphabetically, the photographer is Haskell Wexler.) You would like to think that in his fifteenth feature film, you could expect a certain level of professionalism and finesse in …
Juvenile yet antiquarian adventure yarn, a pastiche of 1930s science fiction and Saturday-matinee serials, a more or less black-and-white film with just a blush of color, a blend of antecedents as diverse as Max Fleischer's Superman cartoons, Spielberg's Indiana Jones series, Lars von Trier's Zentropa, Prince's Under the Cherry Moon. …
The planned pajama party on middle-school graduation night soon gives way to an impromptu scavenger hunt: four cuties vs. three cuties and a chubby (thus the underdogs). At stake: the prime lunch spot by the fountain, as against the losers' spot by the dumpsters. Bland teen comedy targeted at girls …